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Waters of Edera 



WATERS OF EDERA 


BY 

OUIDA 

Author of 

“ The Massarenes,” “ Under Two Flags f Etc., Etc. 




R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 
9 & it East i6th Street, New York 
1899 


v 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 

Library of Ccngree^ 

Office of tho ^ 

L .<!4im rZ 3 

Register of Copy right®,' -^3 

i , ' 



Copyright, 1899. 

By Louisa be ea Rame. 


\ 




Ts ^ . s 


Waters of Edera 


The Waters of Edera 


i 

It was a country of wide pastures, of moors 
covered with heath, of rock-born streams and 
rivulets, of forest and hill and dale, sparsely in- 
habited, with the sea to the eastward of it, un- 
seen, and the mountains everywhere visible 
always, and endlessly changing in aspect. 

Herdsmen and shepherds wandered over it, and 
along its almost disused roads pedlars and pack 
mules passed at times but rarely. Minerals and 
marbles were under its turf, but none sought for 
them ; pools and lakes slept in it, undisturbed, save 
by millions of water fowl and their pursuers. The 
ruins of temples and palaces were overgrown by 
its wild berries and wild flowers. The buffalo 
browsed where emperors had feasted, and the bit- 
tern winged its slow flight over the fields of for- 
gotten battles. 


5 


6 


The Waters of Edera 


It was the season when the flocks are brought 
through this lonely land, coming from the plains 
to the hills. Many of them passed on their 
way thus along the course of the Edera water. 
The shepherds, clothed in goatskin, with the hair 
worn outward, bearded, brown, hirsute men, 
looking like savage satyrs, the flocks they drove 
before them travel-worn, lame, heart-broken, the 
lambs and kids bleating painfully. They cannot 
keep up with the pace of the flock, and, when 
they fall behind, the shepherds slit their throats, 
roast their bodies over an evening fire, or bake 
them under its ashes, and eat them; if a town or 
village be near, the little corpses are sold in it. 
Often a sheep dog or a puppy drops down in the 
same way, footsore and worn out ; then the shep- 
herds do not tarry but leave the creatures to their 
fate, to die slowly of thirst and hunger. 

The good shepherd is a false phrase. No one 
is more brutal than a shepherd. If he were not so 
he could not bear his life for a day. 

All that he does is brutal. He stones the flock 
where it would tarry against his will. He muti- 
lates the males, and drags the females away from 
their sucking babes. He shears their fleeces 
every spring, unheeding how the raw skin drops 


The Waters of Edera 7 

blood. He drives the halting, footsore, crippled 
animals on by force over flint and slate and parch- 
ing dust. Sometimes he makes them travel 
twenty miles a day. 

For his pastime he sets the finest of his beasts 
to fight. This is the feast day and holiday sport 
of all the shepherds; and they bet on it until all 
they have, which is but little, goes on the heads of 
the rams; and one will wager his breeches, and 
another his skin jacket, and another his comely 
wife, and the ram which is beaten, if he have any 
life left in him, will be stabbed in the throat by 
his owner : for he is considered to have disgraced 
the branca. 

This Sunday and Saints’ day sport was going 
on on a piece of grass land in the district known 
as the Vale of Edera. 

On the turf, cleared of its heaths and ferns, 
there was a ring of men, three of them shepherds, 
the rest peasants. In the midst of them were the 
rams, two chosen beasts pitted against each other 
like two pugilists. They advanced slowly at first, 
then more quickly, and yet more quickly, till they 
met with a crash, their two foreheads, hard as 
though carven in stone, coming in collision with a 
terrible force; then each, staggered by the en- 


8 


The Waters of Edera 


counter, drew back dizzy and bruised to recoil and 
take breath and gather fresh force, and so charge 
one on the other in successive rounds until the 
weaker should succumb, and, mangled and sense- 
less, should arise no more. 

One of the rams was old, and one was young; 
some of the shepherds said that the old one was 
more wary and more experienced, and would have 
the advantage; in strength and height they were 
nearly equal, but the old one had been in such 
duels before and the young one never. The young 
one thought he had but to rush in, head down- 
ward, to conquer; the old one knew this was 
not enough to secure victory. The young one was 
blind with ardour and impatience for the fray ; the 
old one was cool and shrewd and could parry and 
wait. 

After three rounds the two combatants met in a 
final shock; the elder ram butted furiously, the 
younger staggered and failed to return the blow, 
his frontal bone was split, and he fell to the 
ground; the elder struck him once, twice, thrice, 
amidst the uproarious applause of his backers; 
a stream of blood poured from his skull, which 
was pounded to splinters; a terrible convulsion 
shook his body and his limbs; he stretched his 


The Waters of Edera 


9 


tongue out as if he tried to lap water; the men 
who had their money on him cursed him with 
every curse they knew; they did not cut his 
throat, for they knew he was as good as dead. 

“ This is a vile thing you have done/’ said a lit- 
tle beggar girl who had been passing, and had 
been arrested by the horrible fascination of the 
combat, and forced against her will to stand and 
watch its issue. The shepherds jeered; those who 
had backed the victor were sponging his wounds 
beside a runlet of water which was close at hand ; 
those who had lost were flinging stones on the 
vanquished. The girl knelt down by the dying 
ram to save him from the shower of stones ; she 
lifted his head gently upward, and tried to pour 
water through his jaws from a little wooden cup 
which she had on her, and which she had filled at 
the river. But he could not swallow ; his beauti- 
ful opaline eyes were covered with film, he gasped 
painfully, a foam of blood on his lips and a stream 
of blood coursing down his face ; a quiver passed 
over him again; then his head rested lifeless on 
her knees. She touched his shattered horns, his 
clotted wool, tenderly. 

“ Why did you set him to fight ? ” she said with 
an indignation which choked her voice. “ It was 


io The Waters of Edera 

vile. He was younger than the other and knew 
less.” 

Those who had won laughed. Those who had 
lost cursed him again ; he had disgraced his 
branca. They would flay him, and put him in the 
cauldron over the wood fire, and would curse him 
even whilst they picked his bones for a white-liv- 
ered spawn of cowards ; a son of a thrice-damned 
ewe. 

The girl knew that was what they do. 
She laid his battered head gently down upon 
the turf, and poured the water out of her cup, her 
eyes were blind with tears ; she could not give him 
back his young life, his zest in his pastoral pleas- 
ures, his joy in cropping the herbage, his rude 
loves, his merry gambols, his sound sleep, his 
odorous breath. 

He had died to amuse and excite the ugly pas- 
sions of men, as, as if he had lived longer he 
would, in the end, have died to satisfy their ugly 
appetites. 

She looked at his corpse with compassion, the 
tears standing in her eyes ; then she turned away, 
and as she went saw that her poor ragged clothes 
were splashed here and there with blood, and that 
her arms and hands were red with blood : she had 


The Waters of Edera 1 1 

not thought of that before ; she had thought only 
of him. The shepherds did not notice her; they 
were quarrelling violently in dispute over what 
had been lost and won, thrusting their fingers in 
each other’s faces, and defiling the fair calm of the 
day with filthy oaths. 

The girl shrank away into the heather with the 
silent swiftness of a hare; now that she had lost 
the stimulus of indignant pity, she was afraid of 
these brutes ; if the whim entered into them they 
would be as brutal to her as to their flock. 

Out of fear of them she did not descend at once 
to the river, but pushed her way through the 
sweet-smelling, bee-haunted, cross-leaved heaths; 
she could hear the sound of the water on her right 
all the time as she went. She knew little of this 
country, but she had seen the Edera, and had 
crossed it farther up its course on one of its rough 
tree-bridges. 

When, as well as she could judge, she had got 
half a mile away from the scene of the rams’ com- 
bat, she changed her course and went to the right, 
directed by the murmur of the river. It was slow 
walking through the heath and gorse which grew 
above her head, and were closely woven together, 
but in time she reached shelving ground, and 


I 2 


, The Waters of Edera 


heard the song of the river louder on her ear. The 
heath ceased to grow within a few yards of the 
stream and was replaced by various water plants 
and by acacia thickets; she slid down the banks 
between the stems and alighted on her bare feet 
where the sand was soft and the water-dock grew 
thick. She looked up and down the water, there 
was no one in sight, nothing but the banks rose- 
hued with the bloom of the heather, and, beyond 
the opposite shore, in the distance, the tender ame- 
thystine hues of the mountains. The water was 
generally low, leaving the stretches of sand and of 
shingle visible, but it was still deep in many parts. 

She stripped herself and went down into it, and 
washed the blood which had by this time caked 
upon her flesh. It seemed a pity she thought to 
sully with that dusky stain this pure, bright, shin- 
ing stream ; but she had no other way to rid her- 
self of it, and she had in all the world no other 
clothes than these poor woollen rags. 

Her heart was still sore for the fate of the con- 
quered ram; and her eyes filled again with tears 
as she washed his blood off her in the gay running 
current. But the water was soothing and fresh, 
the sun shone on its bright surface; the comfrey 


The Waters of Edera 1 3 

and fig-wart blew in the breeze, the heather smell 
filled the atmosphere. 

She was only a child and her spirits rose, and 
she capered about in the shallows, and flung the 
water over her head, and danced to her own re- 
flection in it, and forgot her sorrow. Then she 
washed her petticoats as well as she could, having 
nothing but water alone, and all the while she was 
as naked as a Naiad, and the sun smiled on her 
brown, thin, childish body as it smiled on a stem 
of plaintain or on the plumage of a coot. 

Then when she had washed her skirt she spread 
it out on the sand to dry, and sat down beside it, 
for the heat to bake her limbs after her long bath. 
There was no one, and there was noth- 
ing, in sight ; if any came near she could 
hide under the great dock leaves until such 
should have passed. It was high noon, 
and the skirt of wool and the skirt of hemp 
grew hot and steamed under the vertical rays ; she 
was soon as dry as the shingles from which the 
water had receded for months. She sat with her 
hands clasped round her updrawn knees, and her 
head grew heavy with the want of slumber, but 
she would not sleep, though it was the hour of 
sleep. Some one might pass by and steal her 


The Waters of Edera 


H 

clothes she thought, and how or when would she 
ever get others ? 

When the skirt was quite dried, the blood stains 
still showed on it; they were no longer red, but 
looked like the marks from the sand. She tied it 
on round her waist and her shirt over it, and 
wound an old crimson sash round both. Then she 
took up her little bundle in which were the wooden 
cup and a broken comb, and some pieces of 
hempen cloth and a small loaf of maize bread, and 
went on along the water, wading and hopping in 
it, as the water- wagtails did, jumping from stone 
to stone and sinking sometimes up to her knees in 
a hole. 

She had no idea where she would rest at night, 
or where she would get anything to eat ; but that 
reflection scarcely weighed on her; she slept well 
enough under stacks or in outhouses, and she was 
used to hunger. So long as no one meddled with 
her she was content. The weather was fine and 
the country was quiet. Only she was sorry for 
the dead ram. By this time they would have 
hung him up by his heels to a tree and have pulled 
his skin off his body. 

She was sorry ; but she jumped along merrily in 


The Waters of Edera 


J 5 

» 

the water, as a kingfisher does, and scarcely even 
wondered where its course would lead her. 

At ia bend in it she came to a spot where {a 
young man was seated amongst the bulrushes, 
watching his fishing net. 

“Aie ! ” she cried with a shrill cry of alarm like 
a bird who sees a fowler. She stopped short in 
her progress; the water at that moment was up to 
her knees. With both hands she held up her petti- 
coat to save it from another wetting; her little 
bundle was balanced on her head, the light shone 
in her great brown eyes. The youth turned and 
saw her. 

She was a very young girl, thirteen at most; 
her small flat breasts were still those of a child, 
her narrow shoulders and her narrow loins spoke 
of scanty food and privation of all kinds, and her 
arms and legs were brown from the play of the 
sun on their nakedness; they were little else than 
skin and bone, nerves and sinew, and looked like 
stakes of wood. All the veins and muscles stood 
revealed as in anatomy, and her face, which 
would have been a child’s face, a nymph’s face, 
with level brows, a pure, straight profile, and 
small close ears like shells, was so fleshless and so 
sunburnt that she looked almost like a mummy. 


The Waters of Edera 


16 

Her black eyes had in them the surprise and sad- 
ness of those of a weaning calf’s; and her hair, 
too abundant for so small a head, would, had it 
not been so dusty and entangled, have been of a 
red golden brown, the hue of a chestnut which 
has just burst open its green husk. 

“ Who are you ? ” said the young man, looking 
at her in surprise. 

“ I am Nerina,” answered the child. 

“Where do you come from? What is your 
country? ” 

She pointed vaguely to the south-west moun- 
tains, where the snow on the upper ranges was 
lying with bands of cloud resting on it. 

“ From the Abruzzi? ” 

She was silent. She did not know the moun- 
tains of her birthplace by their name. 

“ Who was your father ? ” he asked, with some 
impatience. 

“ He was Black Fausto.” 

“ What did he do for a living? ” 

“ He went down with the fair season to the Ro- 
man plain.” 

He understood: the man had no doubt been 
a labourer, one of those who descend in bands 
from the villages of the Abruzzi heights to 


The Waters of Edera 17 

plough, and mow, and sow, and reap, on the lands 
of the Castelli Romani ; men who work in droves, 
and are fed and stalled in droves, as cattle are, 
who work all through the longest and hottest days 
in summer, and in the worst storms of winter; 
men who are black by the sun, are half naked, 
are lean and hairy and drip with continual sweat, 
but who take faithfully back the small wage they 
receive to where their women and children dwell 
in their mountain-villages. 

“ He went, you say ? Is he ill. Does he work 
no longer ? ” 

“ He died last year.” 

“Of what?” 

She gave a hopeless gesture. “ Who knows ? 
He came back with a wolf in his belly, he said, al- 
ways gnawing and griping, and he drank water 
all day and all night, and his face burned, and his 
legs were cold, and all of a sudden his jaw fell, 
and he spoke no more to us. There are many of 
them who die like that after a hot season down in 
the plains.” 

He understood; hunger and heat, foul air in 
their sleeping places, infusoria in the ditch and 
rain water, and excessive toil in the extremes of 
heat and cold make gaps in the ranks of these 


i8 


The Waters of Edera 


hired bands every year as if a cannon had been 
fired into them. 

“ Who takes care of you now? ” he asked with 
pity, as for a homeless bitch. 

“ Nobody. There is nobody. They are all gone 
down into the earth.” 

“ But how do you live? ” 

“ I work when I can. I beg when I cannot. 
People let me sleep in the stalls, or the barns, and 
give me bread.” 

“ That is a bad life for a girl.” 

She shrugged her shoulders. 

“ I did not make it.” 

“ And where are you going? ” 

She opened her arms wide and swept the air 
with them. 

“ Anywhere. Along the water, until I find 
something to do.” 

“ I cannot do much,” she added, after a pause. 
“ I am little, and no one has taught me. But I 
can cut grass and card wool.” 

“ The grass season is short, and the wool sea- 
son is far off. Why did you not stay in your vil- 
lage ? ” 

She was mute. She did not know why she had 
left it, she had come away down the mountain- 


The Waters of Edera 


l 9 


side on a wandering instinct, with a vague idea of 
finding something better the farther she went : her 
father had always come back with silver pieces in 
his pocket after his stay down there in those lands 
which she had never seen, lying as they did down 
far below under the golden haze of what seemed 
an immeasurable distance. 

“ Are you not hungry? ” said the fisher. 

“ I am always hungry,” she said, with some as- 
tonishment at so simple a question. “ I have been 
hungry ever since I can remember. We all were 
up there. Sometimes even the grass was too dried 
up to eat. Father used to bring home with him a 
sack of maize; it was better so long as that 
lasted.” 

“ Are you hungry now ? ” 

“ Of course.” 

“ Come to my house with me. We will feed 
you. Come. Have no fear. I am Adone Alba, 
of the Terra Vergine, and my mother is a kind 
woman. She will not grudge you a meal.” 

The child laughed all over her thin, brown face. 

“ That will be good,” she said, and leapt up out 
of the water. 

“ Poor soul ! Poor little soul ! ” thought the 
young man, with a profound sense of pity. 


20 


The Waters of Edera 


As the child sprang up out of the river, shaking 
the water off her as a little terrier does, he saw 
that she must have been in great want of food for 
a long time; her bones were almost through her 
skin. He set his fishing pole more firmly in the 
ground, and left the net sunk some half a yard be- 
low the surface ; then he said to the little girl : 
“ Come, come and break your fast. It has lasted 
long, I fear.” 

Nerina only understood that she was to be fed ; 
that was enough for her. She trotted like a stray 
cur, beckoned by a benevolent hand, behind him as 
he went, first through some heather and broom, 
then over some grass, where huge olive trees 
grew, and then through corn and vine lands, to 
an old farmhouse, made of timber and stone; 
large, long, solid; built to resist robbers in days 
when robbers came in armed gangs. There was a 
wild garden in front of it, full of cabbage roses, 
lavender, myrtle, stocks, and wallflowers. Over 
the arched door a four-season rose-tree clambered. 

The house, ancient and spacious, with its high- 
pitched roof of ruddy tiles, impressed Nerina with 
a sense of awe, almost of terror. She remained 
hesitating on the garden path, where white and 
red stocks were blossoming. 


The Waters of Edera 


21 


“ Mother/’ said Adone, “ Here is a hungry 
child. Give her, in your kindness, some broth and 
bread.” 

Clelia Alba came out into the entrance, and saw 
the little girl with some displeasure. She was 
kind and charitable, but she did not love beggars 
and vagabonds, and this half-naked female tatter- 
demalion offended her sense of decency and pro- 
bity, and her pride of sex. She was herself a 
stately and handsome woman. 

“ The child is famished,” said Adone, seeing his 
mother’s displeasure. 

‘‘ She shall eat then, but let her eat outside,” 
said Clelia Alba, and went back into the kitchen. 

Nerina waited by the threshold timid and mute 
and humble, like a lost dog, her eyes alone ex- 
pressed overwhelming emotions: fear and hope, 
and one ungovernable appetite, hunger. 

Clelia Alba came out in a few minutes with a 
bowl of hot broth made of herbs, and a large piece 
of maize-flour bread. 

“ Take them,” she said to her son. 

Adone took them from her, and gave them to 
the child. 

“ Sit and eat here,” he said, pointing to a stone- 
settle by the wall under the rose of four seasons. 


22 


The Waters of Edera 


The hands of Nerina trembled with excitement, 
her eyes looked on fire, her lips shook, her breath 
came feverishly and fast. The smell of the soup 
made her feel beside herself. She said nothing, 
but seized the food and began to drink the good 
herb-broth with thirsty eagerness though the 
steam of it scorched her. 

Adone, with an instinct of compassion and deli- 
cacy, left her unwatched and went within. 

“ Where did you find that scarecrow? ” asked 
his mother. 

“ Down by the river. She has nobody and 
nothing. She comes from the mountains.” 

“ There are poor folks enough in Ruscino with- 
out adding to them from without,” said Clelia 
Alba impatiently. “ Mind she does not rob the 
fowl-house before she slips away.” 

“ She has honest eyes,” said Adone, “ I am sure 
she will do us no harm.” 

When he thought that she had been given time 
enough to finish her food he went out; the child 
was stretched at full length on the stone seat, and 
was already sound asleep, lying on her back; the 
empty bowl was on the ground, of the bread there 
was no longer a crumb; she was sleeping peace- 
fully, profoundly, her thin hands crossed on her 


The Waters of Edera 23 

naked brown bosom, on which some rose leaves 
had fallen from the rose on the wall above. 

He looked at her in silence for a little while, 
then returned to his mother. 

“ She is tired. She sleeps. Let her rest.” 

“ It is unsafe.” 

“ How unsafe, mother? She is only a child.” 

“ She may have men behind her.” 

“ It is not likely.” 

Adone could not say (for he had no idea him- 
self) why he felt sure that this miserable little 
waif would not abuse hospitality : “ She is a 

child,” he answered rather stupidly, for children 
are often treacherous and wicked, and he knew 
nothing of this one except what she had chosen to 
tell of herself. 

“ She may have men behind her,” repeated his 
mother. 

“ Such men as you are thinking of mother, do 
not come to this valley nowadays. Ulisse Ferrero 
was the last of them. Indeed, I think this poor 
little creature is all alone in the world. Go and 
look at her. You will see how forlorn and small 
she is.” 

She went to the doorway and looked at the 
sleeping beggar; her eyes softened as she gazed, 


24 


The Waters of Edera 


the whole attitude and appearance of the child 
were so miserable and so innocent, so helpless, 
and yet so tranquil, that her maternal heart was 
touched ; the waif slept on the stone bench beside 
the door of strangers as though she were in some 
safe and happy home. 

Clelia Alba looked down on her a few mo- 
ments, then took the kerchief off her hair, and laid 
it gently without awakening the sleeper over the 
breast and the face of the child, on which flies 
were settling and the sun was shining. 

Then she picked up the empty earthenware 
bowl, and went indoors again. 

“ I will go back to the river,” said Adone. “ I 
have left the net there.” 

His mother nodded assent. 

“ You will not send this little foreigner away 
till I return ? ” he asked. Every one was a for- 
eigner who had not been born in the vale of 
Edera. 

“ No; not till you return.” 

He went away through the sunshine and 
shadow of the olive-trees. He knew that his 
mother never broke her word. But she thought 
as she washed the bowl : “ A little stray mongrel 
bitch like that may bite badly some day. She must 


The Waters of Edera 25 

go. She is nothing now ; but, by and by she may 
bite." 

Clelia Alba knew human nature, though she 
had never been out of sight of the river Edera. 
She took her spinning-wheel and sat down by the 
door. There was nothing urgent to do, and she 
could from the threshold keep a watch on the lit- 
tle vagabond, and would be aware if she awoke. 
All around was quiet. She could see up and down 
the valley, beyond the thin, silvery foliage of the 
great olive-trees, and across it to where the ruins 
of a great fortress towered in their tragic help- 
lessness. The sun shone upon her fields of young 
wheat, her slopes of pasture. The cherry-trees 
and the pear-trees were in bloom, her trellised 
vines running from tree to tree. Ragged-robin, 
yellow crowsfoot, purple orchis, filled the grass 
intermixed with the blue of borage and the white 
and gold of the oxeye. She did not note these 
things. Those fancies were for her son. Herself, 
she would have preferred that there should be no 
flower in the grasses, for before the cow was fed 
the flowers had to be picked out of the cut grass 
and had served no good end that she could per- 
ceive, for she knew of no bees except the wild ones 


26 


The Waters of Edera 


whose honey no one ever tasted, hidden from 
sight in hollow trees as it was. 

Nerina slept on in peace and without dreams. 
Now and then another rose let fall some petals 
on her, or a bee buzzed above her, but her repose 
remained undisturbed. The good food filled her, 
even in her sleep, with deep contentment, and 
the brain, well nourished by the blood, was still. 

Clelia Alba felt her heart soften despite herself 
for this lonely creature; though she was always 
suspicious of her, for she had never known any 
good thing come down from the high mountains, 
but only theft and arson and murder, and men 
banded together to solace their poverty with 
crime. In her youth the great brigands of the 
Upper Abruzzi had been names of terror in Rus- 
cino, and in the hamlets lying along the course of 
the Edera, and many a time a letter written in 
blood had been fastened with a dagger to the door 
of church or cottage, intimating the will of 
the unseen chief to the subjugated population. Of 
late years less had been heard and seen of such 
men; but they or their like were still heard and 
felt sometimes, up above in lonely forests, or 
down where the moorland and macchia met, and 


The Waters of Edera 27 

the water of Edera ran deep and lonely. In her 
girlhood, a father, a son, and a grandson had 
been all killed on a lonely part of the higher val- 
ley because they had dared to occupy a farm and a 
water-mill after one of these hillmen had laid 
down the law that no one was to live on the land 
or to set the water-wheel moving. 

That had been a good way off, indeed, and for 
many a year the valley of Edera had not seen the 
masked men, with their belts, crammed with arms 
and gold, round their loins; but still, one never 
knew, she thought; unbidden guests were oftener 
devils than angels. 

And it seemed to her that the child could not 
really be asleep all this time in a strange place and 
in the open air. At last she got up, went again to 
the bench and drew her handkerchief aside, and 
looked down on the sleeper; on the thin, narrow 
chest, the small, bony hands, the tiny virginal 
nipples like wood strawberries. 

She saw that the slumber was real, the girl very 
young and more than half-starved. “ Let her for- 
get while she can,” she thought, and covered her 
face again. “ It is still early in the day.” 

The bees hummed on ; a low wind swept over a 


28 


The Waters of Edera 


full-blown rose and shook its loose leaves to the 
ground. The shadow from the ruined tower be- 
gan to touch the field which lay nearest the river, 
a sign that it was two hours after noon. 


II 


The large square fresh- water fishing-net had 
sunk under the surface, the canes which framed 
it were out of sight; only the great central pole, 
which sustained the whole, and was planted in the 
ground of the river-bank, remained visible as it 
bent and swayed but did not yield or break. Such 
nets as this had been washed by the clear green 
waters of the pools and torrents of the Edera ever 
since the days of Etruscan gods and Latin au- 
gurs ; religions had changed, but the river, and the 
ways of the men of the river had not altered. 

Adone did not touch it, for it was well where it 
was; he seated himself on the bank ready to seize 
and hold it if its pole showed any sign of yielding 
and giving way and heeling over into the stream. 
He sat thus amongst the bulrushes for many an 
hour, on many a spring day and summer night. 
Although fish were not numerous he never tired 
of his vigil, lulled by the sound of the current as 
it splashed among the stones and rippled through 
the rushes ; a deeper music coming from its higher 


29 


The Waters of Edera 


3 ° 

reaches where it fell over a ledge of rock and 
leapt like a live thing into the air. And, indeed, 
what thing could be more living than this fresh, 
pure, untroubled water, glad as a child, swift as a 
swallow, singing for sport, as a happy boy sings, 
as it ran down on its way from the hills ? 

To the young man sitting now on its bank 
amidst the bulrushes it was as living as himself, 
his playmate, friend, and master, all in one. First 
of all things which he could remember were the 
brightness and the coolness of it as it had laved his 
limbs in his childhood on midsummer noons, his 
mother’s hands holding him safely as he waded 
with rosy feet and uncertain steps along its pebbly 
bottom! How many mornings, when he had 
grown to boyhood and to manhood, had he es- 
caped from the rays of the vertical sun into its 
acacia-shadowed pools ; how many moonlit, balmy 
nights had he bathed in its still reaches, the liquid 
silver of its surface breaking up like molten metal 
as he dived ! How many hours of peace had he 
passed, as he was spending this, waiting for the 
fish to float into his great net, whilst the air and 
the water were alike so still that he could hear the 
little voles stealing in and out amongst the reeds, 
and the water-thrush pushing the pebbles on its 


The Waters of Edera 31 

sands in search for insects, though beast and bird 
were both unseen by him! How many a time 
upon the dawn of a holy-day had he washed and 
swam in its waters whilst the bells of the old 
church in the village above had tolled in the soft- 
ness of dusk ! 

He thought of none of these memories dis- 
tinctly, for he was young and contented, and those 
who are satisfied with their lot live in their pres- 
ent ; but they all drifted vaguely through his mind 
as he sat by the side of the river, as the memories 
of friends dear from infancy drift through our 
waking dreams. 

He was in every way a son of the Edera, for he 
had been born almost in the water itself, for his 
mother had been washing linen with other women 
at the ford when she had been taken with the 
pains of labour two months before her time. Her 
companions had had no time or thought to do 
more than to stretch her on the wet sand, with 
some hempen sheets, which had not yet been 
thrown in the water, between her and the ground ; 
and the cries of her in her travail had echoed over 
the stream and had startled the kingfishers in the 
osiers, and the wild ducks in the marshes, and the 
tawny owls asleep in the belfry tower of the vil- 


The Waters of Edera 


3 2 

lage. But her pains had been brief though sharp, 
and her son had first seen the light beside the 
water ; a strong and healthy child, none the worse 
for his too early advent, and the rough river- 
women had dipped him in the shallows, where 
their linen and their wooden beaters were, and 
had wrapped him up in a soiled woollen shirt, and 
had laid him down with his face on his mother’s 
young breast, opening his shut unconscious mouth 
with their rough fingers, and crying in his deaf 
ear, “ Suck ! and grow to be a man ! ” 

Celia Alba was now a woman of forty-one 
years old, and he, her only son, was twenty-four ; 
they had named him Adone; the beautiful Greek 
Adonais having passed into the number of the 
saints of the Latin Church, by a transition so fre- 
quent in hagiology that its strangeness is not re- 
membered save by a scholar here and there. When 
he had been born she had been a young creature of 
seventeen, with the wild grace of a forest doe, 
with that nobility of beauty, that purity of outline, 
and that harmony of structure, which still exist in 
those Italians in whom the pure Italiote blood is 
undefiled by Jew or Gentile. Now her abundant 
hair was white, and her features were bronzed and 
lined by open-air work, and her hands of beautiful 


The Waters of Edera 33 

shape were hard as horn through working in the 
fields. She looked an old woman, and was 
thought so by others, and thought herself so : for 
youth is soon over in these parts, and there is no 
half-way house between youth and age for the 
peasant. 

Clelia Alba, moreover, had lost her youth 
earlier even than others : lost it forever when her 
husband at five-and-twenty years of age had been 
killed by falling from an olive-tree of which the 
branch sustaining him had cracked and broken 
under his weight. His neck had been broken in 
the fall. She had been dancing and shouting with 
her two-year-old child on the grassland not far 
off, romping and playing ball with some dropped 
chestnuts ; and when their play was over she had 
lifted her boy on to her shoulder and run with 
him to find his father. Under one of the great, 
gnarled, wide-spreading olives she had seen him, 
lying asleep as she thought. 

“ Oh, lazy one, awake ! The sun is only two 
hours old !” she had cried merrily, and the child on 
her shoulder had cooed and shouted in imitation, 
“ Wake — wake — wake ! ” and she, laughing, had 
cast a chestnut she had carried in her hand upon 
the motionless figure. Then, as the prostrate form 


The Waters of Edera 


34 

did not stir, a sudden terror had seized her, and 
she had set the baby down upon the grass and run 
to the olive-tree. Then she had seen that this was 
death, for when she had raised him his head had 
dropped and seemed to hang like a poppy broken 
in a blast of wind, and his eyes had no sight, and 
his mouth had no breath. 

From that dread hour Clelia Alba had never 
laughed again. Her hair grew white, and her 
youth went away from her forever. 

She lived for the sake of her son, but she and 
joy had parted company for ever. 

His death had made her sole ruler of the Terra 
Vergine; she had both the knowledge and the 
strength necessary for culture of the land, and she 
taught her boy to value and respect the soil. 

“ As you treat the ground ill or well, so will 
your ground treat you,” she said to him. 

She always wore the costume of the province, 
which was similar to that of the Abruzzi villages, 
and suited her cast of features and her strong and 
haughty carriage. On feast-days she wore three 
strings of fine pearls round her throat, and brace- 
lets of massive gold and of fine workmanship, so 
many in number that her arms were stiff with 
them; they had been her mother’s and grand- 


The Waters of Edera 35 

mother’s and greatgrandmother’s, and had been 
in her dower. To sell or pawn them under stress 
of need, had such occurred, would never have 
seemed to any of her race to be possible. It would 
have seemed as sacrilegious as to take the chalice 
off the church altar and melt its silver and jewels 
in the fire. When she should go to her grave 
these ornaments would pass to Adone for his 
wife, or for his future wife; none of her family 
were living. 

“ Never talk of death, mother,” he said, when- 
ever she spoke of these things. “ Death is always 
listening; and, if he hear his name, he taps the 
talker on the shoulder just to show that he is there 
and must be reckoned with.” 

“ Not so; my son ! ” replied Clelia, with a sigh. 
“ He has every soul of us written down in his 
books from the time we are born ; we all have our 
hour to go and none of us can alter it.” 

“ I do not believe that,” said Adone. “ We kill 
ourselves oftentimes; or we hasten our end as 
drunkards do.” 

“ Did your father hasten his end ? ” said his 
mother. “ Did not some one break that olive 
branch? It was not the tree itself, though the 


The Waters of Edera 


3 6 

Ruscino folks would have it cut down because 
they called it a felon. ” 

“ Was it not the devil? ” said Adone. 

He believed in the devil, of course, as he had 
been taught to do, and had he not as a child met 
the infernal effigy everywhere — in marble, in 
stone, in wood, in colour, in the church and out- 
side it; on water-spout and lamp-iron, and even 
on the leaves of his primer? But it seemed to him 
that the devil had “ troppo braccia ” given him, 
was allowed too long a tether, too free a hand ; if 
indeed he it were that made everything go wrong, 
and Adone did not see who else it could be. Here, 
in the vale of Edera, all the world believed in 
Satan as in holy water, or in daily bread. 

Clelia Alba crossed herself hastily, for she was 
a pious woman. 

“We are talking blasphemy, my son ,” she said 
gravely. “ Of course there is the good God who 
orders the number of our days for each of us, and 
is over us all. ,, 

Adone was silent. To him it seemed doubtful. 
Did the good God kill the pretty little children as 
the butcher in a city killed his lambs? But he 
never contradicted or vexed his mother ; he loved 
her with a great and tender affection. He was less 


The Waters of Edera 37 

ignorant than she was, and saw many things she 
could not see ; he was, as it were, on a hilltop and 
she down in a valley, but he had a profound re- 
spect for her; he obeyed her implicitly, as if he 
were still a child, and he thought the world held 
no woman equal to her. 

When he went back to his house that evening, 
with his great net on his shoulder and swinging 
in one hand some fresh-water fish, he looked at 
the stone bench, which was empty of all except 
some fallen rose-leaves, and then anxiously, ques- 
tioningly, in the face of his mother. 

She answered the regard. 

“ The girl is gone to Gianna’s custody,” she 
said rather harshly. “ Gianna will give her her 
supper, and will let her sleep in the loft. With 
the morning we will see what we can do for her, 
and how she can be sped upon her way.” 

Adone kissed her hands. 

“ You are always good,” he said simply. 

“ I am weak,” answered his mother, “ I am 
weak, Adone; when you wish anything I consent 
to it against my judgment.” 

But she was not weak ; or at least only weak in 
the way in which all generous natures are so. 

On the morrow Nerina was not sped on her 


38 The Waters of Edera 

way. The old woman, Gianna, thought well of 
her. 

“She is as clean as a stone in the water,” she 
said; “she has foul-smelling rags, but her flesh is 
clean. She woke at dawn, and asked for some- 
thing to do : She knows nought, but she is willing 
and teachable. We can make her of use. She has 
nowhere to go. She is a stray little puppy. Her 
people were miserable, but they seem to have been 
pious folks. She has a cross pricked on her shoul- 
der. She says her mother did it when she was a 
babe to scare the devil off her. I do not know 
what to say ; she is a poor, forlorn little wretch ; if 
you like to keep her, I for my part will see to her. 
I am old : it is well to do a good work before one 
dies.” 

Gianna was an old woman, half house-servant, 
half farm-servant, wholly friend ; she had lived at 
the Terra Vergine all her life; big gaunt, and 
very strong, she could do the work of a man, al- 
though she was over seventy years of age ; burnt 
black by the sun, and with a pile of grey hair like 
the hank of flax on her distaff, she was feared by 
the whole district for her penetrating glance and 
her untiring energy. When Gianna was satisfied 
the stars had changed their courses, said the peo- 


The Waters of Edera 


39 


pie, so rare was the event; therefore, that this 
little wanderer contented her was at once a miracle 
and a voucher indisputable. 

So the child remained there; but her presence 
troubled Adone’s mother, though Nerina was 
humble as a homeless dog, was noiseless and sel- 
dom seen, was obedient, agile, and became useful 
in many manners, and learned with equal eager- 
ness the farm work taught her by Gianna, and the 
doctrine taught her by Don Silverio, for she was 
intelligent and willing in every way. Only Clelia 
Alba thought, “ Perhaps Gianna’s good heart mis- 
leads her. Gianna is rough ; but she has a heart as 
tender at bottom as a ripe melon’s flesh.” 

Anyhow, she took her old servant’s word and 
allowed the child to remain. She could not bring 
herself to turn adrift a female thing to stray about 
homeless and hungry, and end in some bottomless 
pit. The child might be the devil’s spawn. No 
one could be sure. But she had eyes which looked 
up straight and true, and were as clear as the river 
water where it flowed over pebbles in the shade. 
When the devil is in a soul he always grins be- 
hind the eyes ; he cannot help it ; and so you know 
him ; thus, at least, they thought at Ruscino and in 


The Waters of Edera 


40 

all the valt of Edera; and the devil did not lurk 
in the eyes of Nerina. 

“Havel done right, reverend sir?” asked 
Clelia Alba of the Vicar of Ruscino. 

“ Oh, yes — yes — charity is always right,” he 
answered, unwilling to discourage her in her be- 
nevolence; but in his own mind he thought, “ the 
child is a child, but she will grow; she is brown, 
and starved, and ugly now, but she will grow; 
she is a female thing and she will grow, and I 
think she will be handsome later on; it would 
have been more prudent to have put some money 
in her wallet, and have let her pass on her way 
down the river. The saints forbid that I should 
put aloes into the honey of their hearts; but 
this child will grow.” 

Clelia perceived that he had his doubts as she 
had hers. But they said nothing of them to each 
other. The issue would lie with Time, whom men 
always depict as a mower, but who is also a sower 
too. However, for good or ill, she was there; 
and he knew that, having once harboured her, 
they would never drive her adrift. Clelia was in 
every sense a good woman ; a little hard at times, 
narrow of sympathy, too much shut up in her ma- 


The Waters of Edera 


4 

ternal passion ; but in the main merciful and cor- 
rect in judgment. 

“ If the child were not good the river would not 
have given her to us,” said Adone — and believed 
it. 

“ Good-day, my son,” said the voice of the 
Vicar, Don Sil verio Frascara, behind him, where 
Adone worked in the fields. “ Where did you find 
that scarecrow whom your mother has shown me 
just now? ” 

“ She was in the river, most reverend, dancing 
along in it, as merry as a princess.” 

“ But she is a skeleton ! ” 

“ Almost.” 

“ And you know nothing of her ? ” 

“ Nothing, sir.” 

“ You are more charitable than wise.” 

“ One cannot let a little female thing starve 
whilst one has bread in the hutch. My mother is 
a virtuous woman. She will teach the child vir- 
tue.” 

“ Let us hope so,” said Don Silverio. “ But all, 
my son, do not take kindly to that lesson.” 

“ What will be, will be. The river brought 
her.” 

He credited the river with a more than human 


42 The Waters of Edera 

sagacity. He held it in awe and in reverence as a 
deity, as the Greeks of old held their streams. It 
would have drowned the child, he thought, if she 
had been an evil creature or of evil augury. But 
he did not say so, for he did not care to provoke 
Don Silverio’s fine fleeting ironical smile. 

A goatherd who passed some few days later 
with his flock on his way to the mountains, recog- 
nised the little girl. 

“ You are Black Fausto’s daughter,” he said to 
her. “Is he dead? Eh, well, we must all die. May 
his soul rest.” 

To Gianna, who questioned him, he said, “Yes, 
he was a good soul. Often have I seen him down 
in the Roman plains. He worked himself to 
death. These gangs of labourers get poor pay. I 
saw him also in the hills where this girl comes 
from, ever so high up, you seem to touch the sky. 
I summered there two years ago; he had his 
womankind in a cabin, and he took all that he got 
home to them. Aye, he was a good soul. We can 
come away out of the heats, but they have to stay 
down in them ; for the reaping and the sowing are 
their chief gain, and they get the fever into their 
blood, and the worms into their bellies, and it kills 
them mostly before they are forty. You see, at 


The Waters of Edera 43 

Ansalda, where he came from it was snow eight 
months out of the twelve, so the heats and the 
mists killed him : for the air you are born in you 
want, and if you don’t get it in time you sicken.” 

“ Like enough,” said Gianna, who herself had 
never been out of sight of the river Edera ever 
since she had been a babe in swaddling clothes. 
“ Tell me, gossip, was the child born in wed- 
lock?”, 

“ Eh, eh ! ” said the goatherd grinning. “ That 
I would not take on me to say. But like enough, 
like enough; they are always ready to go before 
the priest in those high hills.” 

The little girl glided into her place humbly and 
naturally, with no servility but with untiring 
willingness and thankfulness. It seemed to her an 
amazing favour of heaven to live with these good 
people; to have a roof over her head and food 
regularly every day. Up there in her home, 
amongst the crags of Ansalda, she had never 
known what it was not to have a daily hunger 
gnawing always in her entrails, and making her 
writhe at night on her bed of dry leaves. In her 
thirteen years of life she had never once had 
enough — no one ever had. A full stomach had 
been a thing unknown. 


44 


The Waters of Edera 


She began to grow, she began to put a little 
flesh on her bones ; they had cut her hair short, for 
it had not been clean, and it grew again burnished 
and bright like copper; colour came into her 
cheeks and her lips ; she seemed to spring upward, 
visibly, like a young cane. She worked hard, but 
she worked willingly, and she was well nourished 
on sound food, though it had little variety and was 
entirely vegetable; and every day she went down 
and bathed in the river at the same place where 
she had sat nude under the dock leaves whilst her 
skirt dried in the sun. 

To her the Terra Vergine was Paradise itself; 
to be fed, to be clothed, to have a mattress to sleep 
on, to work amongst the flowers and the grass and 
the animals — it was all so beautiful, she thought 
sometimes that she must be in heaven. 

She spoke little. Since she had been under this 
roof she had grown ashamed of the squalor and 
starvation and wretchedness of her past existence. 
She did not like to think of it even; it had been 
no fault of hers, but she felt ashamed that she 
ever should have been that little filthy, unkempt 
naked thing, grovelling on the clay floor, and 
fighting for mouldy crusts with the other children 
on the rock of Ansalda. 


The Waters of Edera 45 

“ If I had only known when father was alive,” 
she thought, but even if she had known all she 
knew now, what could she have done ? There had 
been nothing to use, nothing to eat, nothing to 
wear, and the rain and the snow and the wind had 
come in on them where they had lain huddled to- 
gether on their bed of rotten leaves. 

Now and then she said something of that rude 
childhood of hers to Adone; she was afraid of the 
women, but not of him; she trotted after him as 
the little white curly dog Signorino trotted after 
Don Silverio. 

“ Do not think of those dark days, little one,” 
he said to her. “ They are gone by. Think of 
your parents and pray for their souls ; but let the 
rest go; you have all your life to live.” 

“ My mother was young when she died,” said 
the child. “ If she had had food she would not 
have died. She said so. She kept on gnawing a 
bit of rag which was soaked in water; you cheat 
hunger that way, you know, but it does not fill 
you.” 

“ Poor soul ! Poor soul ! ” said Adone, and he 
thought of the great markets he had seen in the 
north, the droves of oxen, the piles of fruits, the 
long lines of wine carts, the heaps of slaughtered 


46 The Waters of Edera 

game, the countless shops with their electric light, 
the trains running one after another all the nights 
and every night to feed the rich ; and he thought, 
as he had thought when a boy, that the devil had 
troppo braccio , if any devil indeed there were be- 
side man himself. 

Should there be anywhere on the face of the 
earth, young women, good women, mothers of 
babes who died of sheer hunger like this mother 
of Nerina’s up yonder in the snows of the 
Abruzzi? He thought not; his heart revolted at 
the vision of her, a living skeleton on her heap of 
leaves. 

“ Father brought all he had,” continued the 
child, “ but he could not come back until after har- 
vest, and when he came back she had been in the 
ground two months and more. They put him in 
the same ditch when his turn came; but she was 
no longer there, for they take up the bones every 
three years and burn them. They say they must, 
else the ditch would get too full.” 

Adone shuddered. He knew that tens of thou- 
sands died so, and had died so ever since the days 
of Phenicians and Gauls and Goths. But it re- 
volted him. The few gorged, the many famished 


The Waters of Edera ■ 47 

— strange disproportion! unkind and unfair bal- 
ance! 

But what remedy was there ? 

Adone had read some socialistic and com- 
munistic literature; but it had not satisfied him; 
it had seemed to him vain, verbose, alluring, but 
unreal, no better adapted to cure any real hunger 
than the soaked rag of Nerina’s mother. 


Ill 


The Val d’Edera is situated on the south of the 
Marches, on the confines of what is now the terri- 
torial division of the Abruzzo-Molese, and so lies 
between the Apennines and the Adriatic, fanned 
by cool winds in summer from the eternal snow of 
the mountain peaks, and invigorated in all sea- 
sons by breezes from the Adrian Sea. 

Ruscino, placed midway in the valley, is only a 
village to which no traveller had for many years 
come, and of which no geographer ever speaks ; it 
is marked on the maps of military topographers, 
and is, of course, inscribed on the fiscal rolls, but 
is now no more than a village ; though once when 
the world was young it was the Etruscan Rusciae, 
and then the Latin Ruscinonis ; and then when the 
Papacy was mighty, it was the militant principal- 
ity of the fortified town of Ruscino. But it was 
now only an almost uninhabited village ; a pale, di- 
minutive, shrunken relic of its heroic self ; and of 
it scarcely any man knows anything except the 
few men who make their dwelling there; sons of 
48 


The Waters of Edera 49 

the soil, who spring from its marble dust and re- 
turn to it. 

It had shrunk to a mere hamlet as far as its 
population was counted; it shrank more and more 
with every census. There was but a handful of 
poor people who, when gathered together in the 
great church, looked no more than a few flies on a 
slab of marble. 

The oldest men and women of the place could 
recall the time when it had been still of some im- 
portance as a posting place on the mountain route 
between the markets of the coast and the western 
towns, when its highway had been kept clean and 
clear through the woods for public and private 
conveyance, and when the clatter of horses' hoofs 
and merry notes of horns had roused the echoes of 
its stones. In that first half of the century, too, 
they had lived fairly well, and wine and fowls had 
cost next to nothing, and home-made loaves had 
been always large enough to give a beggar or a 
stray dog a slice. But these times had long been 
over ; every one was hungry now and every one a 
beggar by way of change, and to make things 
equal, as the people said, with dreary mirth and 
helpless acquiescence in their lot. Like most 
riverain people they lived chiefly by the river, 


The Waters of Edera 


5 ° 

cutting and selling its canes, its sallows, its osiers, 
its sedges, catching its fish, digging its sand ; but 
there were few buyers in this depopulated district. 

Don Silverio Frascara, its vicar, had been sent 
to Ruscino as a chastisement for his too sceptical 
and inquiring mind, his too undisciplined temper. 
Nearly twenty years in this solitude had chastened 
both; the fire had died out of his soul and the 
light out of his eyes. His days were as monoto- 
nous as those of the blinded ass set to turn the 
wine-press. All the steel of his spirit rusted, all 
the brilliancy of his brain clouded ; his life was like 
a fine rapier which is left in a corner of a dusty 
attic and forgotten. 

In certain rare states of the atmosphere the 
gold cross on St. Peter’s is visible from some of 
the peaks of the Abruzzese Apennines. It looks 
like a speck of light far, far away in the silver- 
green of the western horizon. When one day he 
climbed to such an altitude and saw it thus, his 
heart contracted with a sickly pain, for in Rome 
he had dreamed many dreams; and in Rome, 
until his exile to the Vale of Edera, he had been a 
preacher of noted eloquence, of brilliant fascina- 
tion, and of daring thought. 

There had been long cypress alleys which at 


The Waters of Edera 51 

sunset had glowed with rose and gold where he 
had in his few leisure hours builded up such vis- 
ions for the future as illumined the unknown 
years to the eyes of an Ignatius, a Hildebrand, a 
Lacordaire, a Bossuet. On the place where those 
grand avenues had stretched their green length in 
the western light and the seminarist had paced 
over the sward there were now long, dreary lines 
of brick and stone, the beaten dust of roadways, 
the clang and smoke of engines; as the gardens 
had passed away so had passed his ambitions and 
visions, as the cypresses had been ground to pow- 
der in the steam mill so was he crushed and 
effaced under an inexorable fate. The Church, 
intolerant of individuality, like all despotisms, had 
broken his spirit ; like all despotisms the tyranny 
had been blind. But he was rebellious to doctrine 
— she bound him to her stake. 

He would have been a great prelate, perhaps 
even a great Pope ; but he would have been also a 
great reformer, so she stamped him down into 
nothingness under her iron heel. And for almost 
a score of years she had kept him in Ruscino, 
where he buried and baptized the old and new 
creatures who squirmed in the dust, where any 
ordinary country priest able to gabble through the 


The Waters of Edera 


5 2 

ritual could have done as well as he. Some few 
of the more liberal and learned dignitaries of the 
Church did indeed think that it was waste of great 
powers, but he had the Sacred College against 
him, and no one ventured to speak in his favour 
at the Vatican. He had no pious women of rank 
to plead for him, no millionaires and magnates to 
solicit his preferment. He was with time forgot- 
ten as utterly as a folio is forgotten on a library 
shelf until mildew eats its ink away and spiders 
nest between its leaves. He had the forty pounds 
a year which the State pays to its parish priests; 
and he had nothing else. 

He was a tall and naturally stately man, but his 
form was bent by that want of good food which 
is the chronic malady of many parts of Italy. 
There was little to eat in Ruscino, and had there 
been more there would have been no one who 
knew how to prepare it. Bread, beans, a little oil, 
a little lard, herbs which grew wild, goat’s milk, 
cheese, and at times a few small river fish; these 
were all his sustenance; his feasts and his fasts 
were much alike, and the little wine he had he 
gave away to the sick and the aged. For this 
reason his high stature was bent and his com- 
plexion was of the clear, yellow pallor of old mar- 


The Waters of Edera 53 

bles; his profile was like the Caesarian outline on a 
medallion, and his eyes were deep wells of im- 
penetrable thought; his finely cut lips rarely 
smiled, they had always upon them an expression 
of bitterness as though the apple of life in its eat- 
ing had been harsh and hard as a crab. 

His presbytery was close to his church, a dreary 
place with a few necessaries and many books only 
within it, and his only servant was an old man, 
lame and stupid, who served also as sacristan. 

It was a cure of souls which covered many miles 
but counted few persons. Outside the old walls 
of Ruscino nearly all the land of the vale of Edera 
was untilled, and within them a few poverty- 
stricken people dragged out their days uncared for 
by any one, only remembered by the collectors of 
fiscal dues. “ They never forget,” said the people. 
“ As soon as one is born, always and in every sea- 
son, until one’s bones rattle down into the ditch 
of the dead, they remember always.” 

The grasp of an invisible power took the crust 
off their bread, the toll off their oil, off their bed 
of sacking, off their plate of fish, and took their 
children when they grew to manhood and sent 
them into strange lands and over strange seas; 
they felt the grip of that hard hand as their fore- 


The Waters of Edera 


54 

fathers had felt it under the Caesars, under the 
Popes, under the feudal lords, under the foreign 
kings, so they felt it now under the Casa Sabauda; 
the same, always the same; for the manners and 
titles of the State may change, but its appetite 
never lessens, and its greed never spares. For 
twice a thousand years their blood had flowed and 
their earnings had been wrung out of them in the 
name of the State, and nothing was changed in 
that respect; the few lads they begot amongst 
them went to Africa, now as under Pompeius or 
Scipio ; and their corn sack was taken away from 
them under Depretis or Crispi, as under the 
Borgia or the Malatesta: and their grape skins 
soaked in water were taxed as wine, their salt for 
their soup-pot was seized as contraband, unless it 
bore the government stamp, and if they dared say 
a word of resistance there were the manacles and 
the prison under Vittorio and Umberto as under 
Bourbon or Bonaparte ; for there are some things 
which are immutable as fate. At long intervals, 
during the passing of ages, the poor stir, like 
trodden worms, under this inexorable monotony 
of their treatment by their rulers ; and then baleful 
fires redden the sky, and blood runs in the con- 
duits, and the rich man trembles; but the cannon 


The Waters of Edera 55 

are brought up at full gallop and it is soon over; 
there is nothing ever really altered; the iron heel 
only presses the harder on the unhappy worm, 
and there is nothing changed. 

Here at Ruscino there were tombs of nenfro 
which had overhung the river for thirty centuries; 
but those tombs have never seen any other thing 
than this, nor ever will until the light and the 
warmth of the sun shall be withdrawn for ever, 
and the earth shall remain alone with her buried 
multitudes. 

There was only Don Sil verio who thought of 
such a thing as this, a scholar all alone amongst 
barbarians ; for his heart ached for his barbarians, 
though they bore him no love in return for his 
pity. They would have liked better a gossiping, 
rotund, familiar, ignorant, peasant priest, one of 
themselves, chirping formula comfortably over 
skeleton corpses. 

In default of other interests he interested him- 
self in this ancient place, passing from neglect 
into oblivion, as his own life was doing. There 
were Etruscan sepulchres and Pelasgic caves 
which had been centuries earlier rifled of their 
objects of value, but still otherwise remained 
untouched under the acacia woods by the river. 


The Waters of Edera 


5 6 

There were columns, and terraces, and founda- 
tions of marble which had been there when 
the Latin city of Ruscinonis had flourished from 
the time of Augustus until its destruction by The- 
odoric. And nearest of all these to him were the 
Longobardo church and the ancient houses, and 
the dismantled fortress, and the ruined walls, of 
what had been the fief of the Toralba, the mediae- 
val fortified town of Ruscino. It still kept this, 
its latest, name, but it kept little else. Thrice a 
thousand centuries had rolled over it, eating it 
away as the sea eats away a cliff. War and fire 
and time had had their will with it for so long that 
dropped acorns and pine-pips had been allowed 
leisure to sink between the stones, and sprout, and 
bud, and rise, and spread, and were now hoary and 
giant trees of which the roots were sunk deep into 
its ruins, its graves, its walls. 

It had been Etruscan, it had been Latin, it had 
been Longobardo, it had been Borgian and Papal ; 
through all these changes a fortified city, then a 
castellated town, then a walled village ; and a vil- 
lage it now remained. It would never be more, 
before many generations passed it would probablv 
have become still less; a mere tumulus, a mere 
honeycomb of tombs, hidden beneath the wild 


The Waters of Edera 57 

sage and the clambering clematis, and would thus 
escape the shameful death of greater places from 
telegraph and telephone poles driven through 
their mosaic floors, and from wheels grinding to 
powder the dust of their deserted agorae. It was 
perishing, surely though slowly, but in peace, with 
the grass growing on its temple stairs, and the 
woodbine winding round its broken columns. 

The trained and stored intellect of Don Silverio 
could set each period of its story apart and read 
all the indices remaining of each. Ruscino was 
now to all others a mere poverty-stricken place, 
brown and gaunt and sorrowful, in the sun, with 
only the river beneath it to keep it clean and alive. 
But to him it was as a palimpsest of surpassing 
value and interest, which, sorely difficult to de- 
cipher, held its treasures close from the profane 
and the ignorant, but tempted and rewarded the 
scholar, like the lettering on a Pompeian nuptial 
ring, the cyphers on a funeral urn of Hercu- 
laneum. “ After all my lot might be worse than 
it is,” he thought with philosophy. “ They might 
have sent me to a modern manufacturing town in 
Lombardy, or exiled me to a socialistic philanstere 
in the Ticino ! ” 

Here, at least, he had history and nature, and 


The Waters of Edera 


58 

he enjoyed thousands of hours undisturbed in 
which to read or write, or muse and ponder on this 
chronicle of brick and stone, this buried mass of 
dead men’s labours and of dead men’s dust. 

Doubtless his manuscripts would lie unknown, 
unread ; no man would care for them ; but the true 
scholar cares neither for public or posterity; he 
lives for the work he loves ; and if he knows that 
he will have few readers in the future — maybe 
none — how many read Grotius, or Boethius, or 
Chrysostom, or Jerome? 

Here, like a colony of ants, the generations had 
crowded one on another, now swept away by the 
stamp of a conqueror’s heel and now succeeded by 
another toiling swarm, building anew each time 
out of ruin, undaunted by the certainty of destruc- 
tion, taught nothing by the fate of their precur- 
sors. 

From the profound sense of despair which the 
contemplation of the uselessness of human effort 
and the waste of human life produces on the 
scholar’s mind, it was a relief to him to watch the 
gladness of its river, the buoyancy of its currents, 
the foam of white blossom on its acacia and 
syringa thickets, the gold spectres and green lances 
of its iris-pseudacorus, the sweep of the winds 


The Waters of Edera 59 

through its bulrushes and canebrakes, the glory of 
colour in the blue stars of its veronica, the bright 
rosy spikes of its epilobium. The river seemed 
always happy, even when the great rainfall of 
autumn churned it into froth and the lightnings 
illumined its ink-black pools. 

It was on the river that he had first made 
friends with Adone, then a child of six, playing 
and splashing in the stream, on a midsummer 
noon. Don Silverio also was bathing. Adone, a 
little nude figure, as white as alabaster in the hot 
light, for he was very fair of skin, sprang suddenly 
out of the water on to the turf above where his 
breeches and shirt had been left ; he was in haste, 
for he had heard his mother calling to him from 
their fields ; an adder started out of a coil of bind- 
weed and wound itself round his ankle as he 
stooped for his clothes. 

The priest, standing waist-deep in the river a 
few yards away, saw it before the child did, and 
cried out to him : “Stand still till I come ! Be not 
afraid ! ” Adone understood, and although trem- 
bling with terror and loathing as he realised his 
danger, and felt the slimy clasp of the snake, re- 
mained motionless as he was bidden to do. In a 


6o 


The Waters of Edera 


second of time the priest had leaped through the 
water to his side, seized the adder and killed it. 

“Good boy/' he said to the child. “If you had 
moved your foot the creature would have bitten 
you.” 

Adone’s eyes filled with tears. 

“Thank you, sir; thank you for mother,” he 
said very gently, for he was a shy child, though 
courageous. 

The priest stroked his curls. 

“There is death in the grass very often. We 
should not fear death, but neither should we run 
risk of it uselessly, especially when we have a 
mother whom it would grieve. Come and bathe 
at this spot, at this hour to-morrow and every 
day, if you like. I will be here and look after 
you; you are little to be alone.” 

They were often together from that day on- 
wards. 

The brutishness and greed of his flock op- 
pressed him. He was sent here to have care of 
their souls, but where were their souls? They 
would all have sold them to the foul fiend for a 
mess of artichokes fried in oil. 

In such a solitude as this he had been glad to 
be able to teach and move the young malleable 


The Waters of Edera 


61 

mind of Adone Alba; the only one of them who 
seemed to have any mind at all. Adone also had 
a voice as sweet as a nightingale in the syringa 
bushes in May; and it pierced the gloom of the 
old naked gaunt church as a nightingale’s thrills 
through the dark hour before dawn. 

There was no other music in that choir except 
the children’s or youth’s voices ; there was nothing 
to make music with except those flexible pipes of 
the boyish throats; and Don Silverio loved and 
understood choral music; he had studied it in 
Rome. Adone never refused to sing for him, and 
when the voice of adolescence had replaced that of 
childhood, he would still stand no less docilely by 
the old marble lectern, and wake the melodies of 
early masters from the yellow pages. 

The church was as damp as a vault of the dead ; 
cold even when the dog-star reigned in the heav- 
ens. The brasses and bronzes were rusted with 
moisture, and the marbles were black with the 
spores of mould; rain dripped through the joints 
of the roof, and innumerable sparrows made their 
nests there; the mosaics of the floor were green 
from these droppings, and from those of the rain ; 
the sun never entered through any of the win- 
dows, which were yellow with age and dust; but 


62 


The Waters of Edera 


here, with a lantern for their only light, they so- 
laced each other with the song of the great choral 
masters. Only Adone, although he never said or 
showed it, was glad when the huge key groaned 
in the lock of the outer door, and he ran out 
into the evening starlight, down the steep streets, 
across the bridge, and felt the fresh river air 
blowing on him, and heard the swirling of the 
water amongst the frost-stiffened canes : and saw 
far off in the darkened fields the glimmer of a 
light — the light of home. 

That old home was the dearest thing on earth 
to the young man. He had never been away 
from it but once, when the conscription called him. 
In that time, which had been to him like a night- 
mare, the time of his brief exile to the army, brief 
because he was the only son of a widow, he had 
been sent to a northern city, one of commerce and 
noise and crowded, breathless life; he had been 
cooped up in it like a panther in a den, like a hawk 
in a cage. What he saw of the vices and appetites 
of men, the pressure of greed and of gain, the 
harsh and stupid tyranny of the few, the slavish 
and ignoble submission of the many; the brutish 
bullying, the crouching obedience, the deadly 
routine, the lewd license of reaction — all filled him 


The Waters of Edera 63 

with disdain and with disgust. When he re- 
turned to his valley he bathed in the waters of 
Edera before he crossed his mother’s threshold. 

“ Make me clean as I was when I left you ! ” 
he cried, and took the water in the hollow of his 
hands and kissed it. 

But no water flows on the earth from land to 
sea which can wholly cleanse the soul as it 
cleanses the body. 

That brief time under arms he cursed as thou- 
sands of youths have cursed it. Its hated stigma 
and pollution never wholly passed away. It left 
a bitterness on his lips, a soil upon his memories. 
But how sweet to him beyond expression, on his 
return, were the sound of the rushing river in 
the silence of the night, the pure odours of the 
blossoming beanfields, the clear dark sky with its 
radiant stars, the sense of home, the peace of his 
own fields ! 

“ Mother, whether life for me shall be long 
or short, here its every hour shall be spent ! ” he 
said, as he stood on his own ground and looked 
through the olive-trees to the river, running 
swiftly and strong beneath the moon. 

“ Those are good words, my son,” said Clelia 
Alba, and her hands rested on his bowed head. 


The Waters of Edera 


64 

He adored both the soil and the water of this 
place of his birth; no toil upon either seemed to 
him hard or mean. All which seemed to him to 
matter much in the life of a man was to be free, 
and he was so. In that little kingdom of fertile 
soil and running stream no man could bid him 
come and go, no law ruled his uprising and his 
down lying; he had enough for his own wants 
and the wants of those about him, enough 
for the needs of the body, and the mind here 
had not many needs; at the Terra Vergine 
he was his own master, except so far as he 
cheerfully deferred to his mother, and all 
which he put into the earth he could take out 
of it for his own usage, though indeed the fiscal 
authorities claimed well nigh one-half, rating his 
land at far more than its worth. No doubt scien- 
tific agriculture might have made it yield more 
than it did ; but he was content to follow the ways 
of old; he farmed as men did when the Sun-god 
was the farm slave of Admetus. The hellebore 
and the violets grew at will in his furrows; the 
clematis and the ivy climbed his fig-trees; the 
fritillaria and the daphne grew in his pastures, 
and he never disturbed them, or scared the starling 
and the magpie which fluttered in the wake of his 


The Waters of Edera 65 

wooden plough. The land was good land, and 
gave him whatever he wanted ; he grudged noth- 
ing off it to bird, or beast, or leaf, or flower, or to 
the hungry wayfarer who chanced to pass by his 
doors. In remote places the old liberal, frank, 
open-handed hospitality of an earlier time is still 
in Italy a practice as well as a tradition. 

The house was their own, and the earth gave 
them their bread, their wine, their vegetables, 
their oil, hemp and flax for their linen, and herbs 
for their soup; of the olive-oil they had more 
than enough for use, and the surplus was sold 
once a year in the nearest town, San Beda, and 
served to meet the fiscal demands. They had 
rarely any ready money, but no peasant in Italy 
ever expects, unless by some luck at lotto, to 
have money in his pocket. 

He worked hard; at some seasons extremely 
hard; he hired labour sometimes, but not often, 
for to pay for the hiring takes the profit off the 
land. But he had been used to such work from 
childhood, and it was never irksome to him ; even 
though he rose in the dark and rarely went home 
to supper till the stars were shining. He had no 
near neighbours except the poor folks in Ruscino. 
All surrounding him was grass and moor and 


66 


The Waters of Edera 


wood, called communal property, but in reality 
belonging legally to no one; vast, still fragrant 
leagues of uninhabited country stretching away 
to the blue hills, home of the fox and the hare 
and the boar, of the hawk and the woodpecker 
and the bittern. 

Through those wilds he loved to wander alone ; 
the sweet stillness of a countryside which was un- 
contaminated by the residence of men stilling the 
vague unrest of his youth, and the mountains 
towering in the light lending to the scene the 
charm of the unknown. 

In days of storm or rain he read with Don Sil- 
verio or sang in the church ; on fine holy-days he 
roamed far afield in the lonely heatherlands and 
woodlands which were watered by the Edera. 
He carried a gun, for defence if need be, for there 
were boars and wolves in these solitudes; but 
he never used it upon bird or beast. 

Like St. Francis of Assissi both he and Don 
Silverio took more pleasure in the life than in the 
death of fair winged things. 

“ We are witness, twice in every year, of that 
great and inexplicable miracle,” the priest said 
often, “ that passage of small, frail, unguided 
creatures, over seas and continents, through tern- 


The Waters of Edera 67 

pests and simoons, and with every man’s hand 
against them, and death waiting to take them 
upon every shore, by merciless and treacherous 
tricks, and we think nought of it ; we care nought 
for it; we spread the nets and the gins — that is 
all. We are unworthy of all which makes the 
earth beautiful — vilely unworthy ! ” 

One of the causes of his unpopularity in Rus- 
cino was the inexorable persistence with which 
he broke their gins, lifted their nets, cleared off 
their birdlime, dispersed their watertraps, and 
forbade the favourite night poaching by lanterns 
in the woods. More than once they threatened 
his life, but he only smiled. 

“ Faccia pure! ” he said, “ you will cut a knot 
which I did not tie, and which I cannot myself 
undo.” 

But they held him in too much awe to dare to 
touch him, and they knew that again and again 
he went on bread and water himself to give his 
wine to the sick, or his strip of meat to their old 
people. 

Moreover they feared Adone. 

“ If you touch a hair of Don Silverio’s head, 
or the hem of his cassock, I will burn Ruscino,” 
said Adone to one of those who had threatened 


68 


The Waters of Edera 


his friend, “ and you will all burn with it, for the 
river will not help you; the river will turn to oil 
and make the flames rage tenfold.” 

The people were afraid as they heard him, for 
good as he was, and usually gentle, he could be 
on provocation both furious and pitiless if he 
were crossed. 

“ For sure ’tis the dead Tor’ alba as speak in 
him,” they said with fright under their breath, 
for there was a tale told in the district that Adone 
Alba was descended from the old war-lords. 

The veterans of the village and the country- 
side remembered hearing their fathers say that 
the family of the Terra Vergine were descended 
from those great marquises who had reigned for 
centuries in that Rocca, which was now a grim 
ivy-covered ruin on the north of the Edera Wa- 
ter. But more than this no one could say; no 
one could tell how the warlike race had become 
mere tillers of the soil, or how those who had 
measured out life and death up and down the 
course of the valley had lost their power and pos- 
sessions. There were vague traditions of a terri- 
ble siege, following on a great battle in the vale; 
that was all. 


IV 


The church in which Don Silverio officiated 
every morning and evening for the benefit of a 
few old crones, had once been a Latin tem- 
ple; it had been built from the Corinthian 
pillars, the marble peristyle, the rounded, open 
dome, like that of the Pantheon, of a pagan 
edifice; and to these had been added a Longo- 
bardo belfry and chancel; pigeons and doves 
roosted and nested in it, and within it was 
cold even in midsummer, and dark always as a 
vault. It was dedicated to St. Jerome, and was a 
world too wide for the shrunken band of believers 
who came to worship in it; there was a high, 
dark altar said to have been painted by Ribera, 
and nothing else that spoke in any way of art 
except the capitals of its pillars and the Roman 
mosaics of its floor. 

The Longobardo bell-tower was of vast height 
and strength; within it were various chambers, 
and these chambers had served through many ages 
as muniment-rooms. There were innumerable 

69 


The Waters of Edera 


70 

documents of many different epochs, almost all in 
Latin, a few in Greek. Don Silverio, who was a 
fine classic as well as a learned archaeologist, spent 
all his lonely and cold winter evenings in the study 
of these early chronicles, his oil lamp burning pale 
and low, his little white dog lying on his knees. 

These manuscripts gave him great trouble, and 
were in many parts almost unintelligible, in oth- 
ers almost effaced by damp, in others again 
gnawed by rats and mice. But he was interested 
in his labours and in his subject, and after several 
years of work on them, he was able to make out a 
consecutive history of the Vald’edera, and he was 
satisfied that the peasant of the Terra Vergine had 
been directly descended from the feudal-lords 
of Ruscino. That pittance of land by the water- 
side under the shadow of the ruined citadel was 
all which remained of the great fief to the youth 
in whose veins ran the blood of men who had 
given princes, and popes, and cardinals, and cap- 
tains of condottieri, and patrons of art, and con- 
querors of revolted provinces, to the Italy of old 
from the beginning of the thirteenth century to 
the end of the sixteenth. For three hundred years 
the Tor ’alba had been lords there, owning all 
their eyes could reach from mountain to sea ; then 


The Waters of Edera 71 

after long siege the walled town and their adja- 
cent stronghold had fallen into the hands of he- 
reditary foes whose forces had been united against 
them. Fire and steel had done their worst, and 
only a month-old child had escaped from the burn- 
ing Rocca, being saved in a boat laden with reeds 
at anchor in the river, and hidden by a faithful 
vassal. The child had grown to manhood and 
had lived to old age, leading a peasant’s life on the 
banks of the Edera ; the name had been mutilated 
in common usage amongst those who spoke only 
the dialect of the province, and for three more cen- 
turies father and son had succeeded each other, 
working for their daily bread where their ances- 
tors had defied Borgia and Della Rovere, and 
Feltrio, and Malatesta; the gaunt dark shade of 
the dismantled citadel lying athwart their field 
between them and the setting sun. 

Should he tell Adone this or not? 

Would the knowledge of his ancestry put a 
thorn in the boy’s contented heart? Would it act 
as a spur to higher things, or be merely as the use- 
less sting of a nettle? 

Who could say? 

Don Silverio remembered the gorgeous dreams 
of his own youth ; and what had been their issue ? 


The Waters of Edera 


72 

At fifty years old he was buried in a deserted 
village, never hearing from year’s end to year’s 
end, one word of friendship or phrase of culture. 

Would it be well or would it be wrong to dis- 
turb that tranquil acquiescence in a humble des- 
tiny? He could not decide. He dared not take 
upon himself so much responsibility. “ In doubt 
do nothing ” has been the axiom of many wise 
men. The remembrance of the maxim closed his 
lips. He had himself been in early manhood pas- 
sionately ambitious; he was only a priest, but of 
priests are made the Gregorio, the Bonifazio, the 
Leone, of the Papal throne; to the dreams of a 
seminarist nothing is impossible. But Adone 
had no such dreams; he was as satisfied with his 
lot as any young steer which wants nothing more 
than the fair fresh fields of its birth. 

But one day as he was sitting with the boy, then 
fifteen years old, on the south bank of the Edera, 
the spirit moved him and he spake. It was the 
day of San Benedetto, when the swallows come. 
The grass was full of pink lychnis and yellow but- 
tercups. A strong east wind was blowing from 
the sea. A number of martins, true to the pro- 
verb, were circling gaily above the stream. The 
water, reflecting the brilliant hues of the heavens, 


The Waters of Edera 


73 


was hurrying on its seaward way, swollen by re- 
cent rains and hastened by a strong wind blowing 
from the eastern mountains. 

The lands of the Terra Vergine lay entirely on 
the south-east bank of the river, and covered many 
acres, of which some was moorland still. Almost 
opposite to it was the one-arched stone bridge, 
attributed to Theodoric, and on the northern bank 
was the ruined Rocca towering above the trees 
which had grown up around it ; whilst hidden by 
it and by the remains of the fortifications was that 
which was now the mere village of Ruscino. 

“ Listen, Adone ! ” he said in his deep, melo- 
dious voice, grave and sweet as a mass of Pales- 
trina. Listen, and I will tell you the tale of 
yonder donjon and village, and of the valley of 
the Edera so far as I have been able to make it 
out for myself.” 

According to the writers whose manuscripts 
he had discovered the town of Ruscino, like Cre- 
mona, had existed before the siege of Troy, that 
is, six hundred years before the foundation of 
Rome. Of this there was no proof except tradi- 
tion, but the ruins of the walls and the tombs by 
the riverside and in the fields proved that it had 


The Waters of Edera 


74 

been an Etruscan city, and of some considerable 
extent and dignity, in those remote ages. 

“ The foundations of the Rocca,” he continued, 
“ were probably part of a great stronghold raised 
by the Gauls, who undoubtedly conquered the 
whole of this valley at the time when they settled 
themselves in what is now the Marches, and 
founded Senegallia. It was visited by Asd'rubal, 
and burned by Alaric; then occupied by the Greek 
free lances of Justinian; in the time of the Frank- 
ish victories, in common with greater places, it 
was forced to swear allegiance to the first papal 
Adrian. After that it had been counted as one of 
the fiefs comprised in the possessions of the Penta- 
polis; and later on, when the Saracens ravaged 
the shores of the Adriatic, they had come up 
the Vald’edera and pillaged and burned again. 
Gregory the Ninth gave the valley to the family 
of its first feudal lords, the Tor’alba in recompense 
for military service, and they, out of the remains 
of the Gallic, Etruscan, and Roman towns rebuilt 
Ruscino and raised the Rocca on the ruins of the 
castle of the Gauls. There, though at feud many a 
time with their foes, the Della Rovere, the Mala- 
testa, and the Dukes of Urbino, they held their 
own successfully, favoured usually by Rome, and 


The Waters of Edera 75 

for three centuries grew in force and in posses- 
sions. But they lost the favour of Rome by their 
haughtiness and independence ; and under pretext 
that they merited punishment, Cesare Borgia 
brought troops of mercenaries against them, and 
after a fierce conflict in the valley (the terrible 
battle of which the villagers preserved the mem- 
ory) the town was besieged, and sacked. 

“ After this battle, which must have taken 
place on yonder moor, to the north-west, for the 
assailants had crossed the Apennines, the Tor’- 
alba and the remnant of men remaining to them 
retreated within the walls of Ruscino. 

“ The whole place and the citadel were burn- 
ing, set on fire by order of Borgia. The 
church alone was spared, and the dead men were 
as thick as stones on the walls, and in the streets, 
and in the nave of the church, and on the steps of 
the houses. This river was choked with corpses, 
and dark with blood. The black smoke towered 
to the sky in billows like a sea. The mercenaries 
swarmed over the bastions and violated the 
women, and cut off their breasts and threw their 
bodies down into the stream and their children 
after them. The Lady of Tor’alba, valiant as 
Caterina Sforza, was the first slain. The whole 


The Waters of Edera 


76 

place was given up to flame and carnage, and 
the great captains were as helpless as dead oxen. 
They were all slain amongst their troopers and 
their vassals, and their bodies were burnt when 
the fortress was fired. 

“ Only one little child escaped the massacre, a 
month-old babe, son of the Marquis of Tor’alba, 
who was hidden by a faithful servant amongst 
the reeds of the Edera in a basket. This servant 
was the only male who escaped slaughter. 

“ The river rushes were more merciful than 
man, they kept the little new-born lordling safe 
until his faithful vassal, under cover of the night, 
when the assailants were drunk and stupid with 
license gratified, could take him to a poor woman 
to be suckled in a cottage farther down the river. 
How he grew up I know not, but certain it is that 
thirty years later one Federigo Tor’alba was liv- 
ing where you live, and the glebe of the Terra 
Vergine was his own, and your house and land 
have never changed hands or title since; only 
your own name has been truncated, as often hap- 
pens in the speech of the people. How this land 
called the Terra Vergine was first obtained I can- 
not say ; the vassal may have saved some gold or 
jewels which belonged to his masters, and have 


The Waters of Edera 77 

purchased these acres, or the land may have been 
taken up and put gradually into cultivation with- 
out any legal right to it; of this there is no ex- 
planation, no record. But from that time the 
mighty lordship of Tor’alba has been extinct, and 
scarcely exists now even in local tradition; al- 
though their effigies are on their tombs, and the 
story of their reign can be deciphered by any one 
who can read a sixteenth-century manuscript, as 
you might do yourself, my son, had you been dili- 
gent.” 

Adone was silent. He had listened with atten- 
tion, as he did to everything which was said or 
read to him by Don Silverio. But he was not 
astonished, because he had often heard, though 
vaguely, the legend of his descent. 

“ Of what use is it ? ” he said, as he sat, moving 
the bright water with his bare slim feet. “ Noth- 
ing will bring it all back.” 

“ It should serve some great end,” said Don 
Silverio, not knowing very well what he meant or 
to what he desired to move the young man’s mind. 
“ Nobility of blood should make the hands 
cleaner, the heart lighter, the aims finer.” 

Adone had shrugged his shoulders. 

“ We are all equal ! ” he answered. 


7 8 The Waters of Edera 

“ We are not all equal,” the priest said curtly. 
“ There is no equality in nature. Are there even 
two pebbles alike in the bed of the river? ” 

Don Silverio, for the first time in his life, could 
have willingly let escape him some unholy word. 
It incensed him that he could not arouse in the 
boy any of that interest and excitement which 
had moved his own feelings so strongly as he had 
spent his spare evenings poring over the crabbed 
characters, and the dust-weighted vellum of the 
charred and mutilated archives discovered by him 
in a secret closet in the bell-tower of his church. 
With infinite toil, patience, and ability he had de- 
ciphered the Latin of rolls, registers, letters, 
chronicles, so damaged by water, fire, and the 
teeth of rats and mice, that it required all an 
archaeologist’s ingenuity and devotion to make 
out any sense from them. Summer days and 
winter nights had found him poring over the 
enigma of these documents, and now, when he 
had conquered and revealed their secret, he, who 
was most concerned in it, was no more stirred by 
curiosity or pride than if he had been one of the 
big tawny owls who had watched him at his la- 
bours in the dusk of the belfry. 

Don Silverio was a learned man and a holy 


The Waters of Edera 


79 

man, and should have despised such vanities, but 
an historic past had great seduction for him; a 
militant race fascinated him against his con- 
science, and aristocracy allured him despite all his 
better judgment : it seemed to him that if he had 
learned that he had come from a knightly gens 
such as this of the Tor’alba, he would have been 
strongly moved to self-glorification than would 
have become a servant of the Church. He 
himself had no knowledge even of his own 
near parentage; he had been a foresaken child, 
left one dark autumn night in the iron cra- 
dle at the gates of a foundling hospita\ in 
Reggio Calabrese. His names had been bestowed 
on him by the chaplain of the institution; and 
his education had been given him by an old noble- 
man of the town, attracted by his appearance and 
intelligence as a child. He was now fifty years 
of age ; and he had never known anything of kith 
and kin, or of the mingled sweetness and impor- 
tunity of any human tie. 

Adone sat silent, looking up at the fortress of 
his forefathers. He was more moved than his 
words showed. 

“ If we were lords of the land and the town 
and the people, we were also lords of the river,” 


8o 


The Waters of Edera 


was what he was thinking; and that thought 
moved him to strong pride and pleasure, for he 
loved the river with a great love, only equalled by 
that which he felt for his mother. 

“They were lords of the river?” he asked 
aloud. 

“ Undoubtedly,” answered the priest. “ It was 
one of the highways of the province from east to 
west and vice versa in that time ; the signoria of 
this Rocca took toll, kept the fords and bridges 
and ferries; none could pass up and down 
under Ruscino without being seen by the sentinels 
on the ramparts here. The Edera was different 
then ; more navigable, perhaps less beautiful. 
Rivers change like nations. There have been 
landslips which have altered its course and made 
its torrents. In some parts it is shallower, in 
others deeper. The woods which enclosed its 
course then have been largely felled, though not 
wholly. Sand has been dug from it incessantly, 
and rocks have fallen across it. As you know, no 
boats or barges which draw any depth of water 
can ascend or descend it now without being 
towed by horses ; and in some parts, as here, it is 
,too uncertain in its depth, too devious in its 
course, too precipitous in its fall for even small 


The Waters of Edera 8 1 

boats to adventure themselves upon it: its shoals 
of lilies can blossom unmolested where its surface 
is level. Yes; undoubtedly, the lords of Ruscino 
were also lords of the Edera, from its mouth to 
its source; and their river formed at once their 
strongest defence and their weakest point. It 
was difficult sufficiently to guard so many miles of 
water; above all because, as I say, its course was 
so much clearer, and its depth so much greater, 
that a flotilla of rafts or cutters could ascend it 
from its mouth as far as this town in the Middle 
Ages; in fact, more than once, corsairs from the 
Levant and from Morocco did so ascend it, and 
though they were driven back by the culverins of 
the citadel, they every time carried off to slavery 
some of the youths and maidens of the plain.” 

Adone gazed across the river to the moss- 
grown walls which had once been fortifications 
still visible on the side of the hill, and to the 
frowning donjon, the blackened towers, the 
ruined bastions, of what had been once the Rocca, 
with the amber light and rosy clouds of the un- 
seen sun behind them. 

“ Teach me Latin, your reverence,” was all he 
said. 


82 


The Waters of Edera 


“ I have always offered to do so,” said Don Sil- 
verio. 

Adone was again silent, swinging his slender 
brown feet in the water, and looking always up- 
ward at the evening sky beyond the great round 
shape of the dismantled fortress. 

Adone learned some Latin with much difficulty, 
studying hard in his evening leisure in the win- 
ters, and with time he could decipher for himself, 
with assistance from Don Silverio, the annals of 
the Tor ’alba; and he saw that it was as certain as 
anything grown over with the lichens and cob- 
webs of time can be that he himself was the last of 
the race. 

“ Your father used to say something of the 
sort,” his mother said; “but he had only heard 
it piecemeal from old people, and never heard 
enough to put the pieces together as you have 
done. ‘ What does it matter either ? ’ he used to 
say; and he said those great lords had been cut- 
throats on the land and robbers on the river. For 
your father’s father had worn the red shirt in his 
youth, as I have told you often, and thought but 
little of lords and princes.” 

But Adone was different; the past allured him 
with the fascination which it has for poets and 


The Waters of Edera 83 

scholars; he was neither of these, except in a 
vague, unconscious way; but his imagination was 
strong and fertile once aroused ; the past, as sug- 
gested to him by the vicar, by degrees became to 
him a living thing and nearer than the present, as 
it is to scholars who are also poets. He was 
neither scholar nor poet; but he loved to muse 
upon that far-off time when his forefathers had 
been lords of the land and of the water. 

He did not want the grandeur, he did not envy 
the power which they had possessed ; but he wished 
that, like them, he could own the Edera from its 
rise in the hills to its fall into the sea. 

“ Oh, dear river! ” he said to it tenderly. “ I 
love you. I love you as the dragon-flies do, as 
the wagtails do, as the water voles do ; I am you 
and you are me. When I lean over you and 
smile, you smile back to me. You are beautiful 
in the night and the morning, when you mirror 
the moon and play with the sunbeams, when you 
are angry under the wind, and when you are at 
peace in the heat of the noon. You have been 
purple with the blood of my people, and now you 
are green and fresh as the leaves of the young 
vine. You have been black with powder and 
battle, now you are fair with the hue of tlie sky 


The Waters of Edera 


84 

and the blue of the myosotis. You are the same 
river as you were a thousand years ago, and yet 
you only come down to-day from the high hills, 
young and strong, and ever renewing. What is 
the life of man beside yours? ” 

That was the ode which he sang in the dialect 
of the province, and the stream washed his feet 
as he sang; and with his breath on his long reed 
flute — the same flute as youths have made and 
used here ever since the days of Apollo Cythar- 
cedes — he copied the singing of the river, which 
piped as it ran, like birds at dawn. 

But this was only at such times as daybreak or 
early night when he was alone. 

There was but a few people within the ruined 
walls of Ruscino ; most of the houses were tenant- 
less and tottering to their fall. A few old bent 
men and weather-beaten women and naked chil- 
dren climbed its steep lanes and slept under its red- 
brown roofs, bawled to each other from its deep 
arched doorways to tell of death or birth, and 
gathered dandelion leaves upon its ramparts to 
cure their shrunken and swollen bladders. He 
knew them every one, he was familiar with and 
kind to them; but he was aloof from them by 
temperament and thought, and he showed them 


The Waters of Edera 85 

his soul no more than the night birds in the 
towers showed their tawny breasts and eyes of 
topaz to the hungry and ragged fowls which 
scratched amongst the dust and refuse on the 
stones in the glare of day. 

“ II bel Ad one! ” sighed matrons and the maid- 
ens of the scattered farms and the old gloomy cas- 
tellated granges which here and there, leagues 
distant from one another, broke the green and 
silent monotony of the vast historic country 
whose great woods sloped from hill to plain. But 
to these, too, he was indifferent, though they had 
the stern and solid beauty of the Latium women 
on their broad low brows, their stately busts, their 
ox-like eyes, their shapely feet and limbs; and 
often, joined to that, the red-gold hair and the 
fair skin of the Adriatic type. As they bound 
the sheaves, and bore the water- jars, and went 
in groups through the seeding grass to chapel, 
or fountain, or shrine, they had the free, frank 
grace of an earlier time; just such as these 
had carried the votive doves to the altars of 
Venus and chaunted by the waters of the Edera 
the worship of Isis and her son. But to Adone 
they had no charm. What did he desire or dream 
of? Himself he could not have said. Perhaps 


86 The Waters of Edera 

they were too warm ; it was certain that they left 
him cold. 

Sometimes he leaned over the river and looked 
longingly into its depths. 

“ Show me the woman I shall love,” he said to 
the water, but it hastened on, glad, tumultuous, 
unheeding; and he only saw the reflection of the 
white jonquils or the golden sword rush on its 
banks. 


V 


Fruits ripen quickly in these provinces, and 
children become women in a summer hour; but 
with Nerina, through want and suffering and 
hunger, physical growth had been slow, and she 
remained long a child in many things and many 
ways. Only in her skill and strength for work 
was she older than her actual age. 

She could hoe, and reap, and sow: she could 
row and steer the boat amongst the shallows as 
well as any man ; she could milk the cow, and put 
the steers in the waggon; she could cord, hemp, 
and weave, and spin either ; she could carry heavy 
weights balanced on her head ; she was strong and 
healthy and never ill, and with it all she was 
happy. Her large bright eyes were full of con- 
tentment, and her rosy mouth often smiled out of 
the mere gladness of living. Her senses were 
still asleep and her young soul wanted nothing 
more than life gave her. 

“ You can earn your bread anywhere now, little 
87 


88 


The Waters of Edera 


one,” said Clelia Alba to her one day, when she 
had been there three years. 

The girl shrank as under a blow; her brown 
and rosy face grew colourless. “ Do you wish me 
to go away? ” she said humbly. 

“ No, no,” said Clelia, although that was what 
she did desire. “ No, not while I live. But 
should I die, you could not stay here with my 
son.” 

“Why?” said Nerina. She did not under- 
stand why. 

Clelia hesitated. 

“ You ought to feel that yourself,” she said 
harshly. “ Young meii and young maids do not 
dwell together, unless- ” 

“Unless what?” asked Nerina. 

“ You are a simpleton indeed, or you are 
shamming,” thought Adone’s mother; but aloud 
she only said : “ It is not in our usage.” 

“' But you will not die,” said Nerina anxiously. 
“ Why should you think of dying, madonna? 
You are certainly old, but you are not so very, 
very old.” 

Clelia smiled. 

“ You do not flatter, child. So much the better. 


The Waters of Edera 89 

Run away and drive in those fowls. They are 
making havoc in the beanfield.” 

She could not feel otherwise than tenderly to- 
wards this young creature, always so obedient, 
so tractable, so contented, so grateful; but she 
would willingly have placed her elsewhere could 
she have done so with a clear conscience. 

“ My son will never do ill by any creature un- 
der his roof,” she thought. “ But still youth is 
youth; and the girl grows.” 

“ We must dower her and mate her; eh, your 
reverence ? ” she said to Don Silverio when he 
passed by later in that day. 

“ Willingly,” he answered. “ But to whom ? 
To the owls or the cats at Ruscino? ” 

In himself he thought, “ She is as straight and 
as slight as a chestnut wand, but she is as strong. 
When you shall try to bend her where she, shall 
not want to go you will not succeed.” 

For he knew the character of Nerina in the 
confessional better than Clelia Alba judged of it 
in her house. 

“ It was not wise to bring her here,” he added 
aloud. “ But having committed that error it 
would be unfair to charge the child with the pain- 


The Waters of Edera 


9 ° 

ful payment of it. You are a just woman, my 
good friend; you must see that.” 

Clelia saw it clearly, for she never tried to trick 
her conscience. 

“ Your reverence mistakes me,” she answered. 
“ I would not give her to any but a good man 
and a good home.” 

“ They are not common,” said Don Silverio. 
“Nor are they as easy to find as flies in sum- 
mer.” 

What was the marriage of the poor for the 
woman ? What did it bring ? What did it mean ? 
The travail of child-bearing, the toil of the fields, 
the hardship of constant want, the incessant 
clamour on her ear of unsatisfied hunger, the 
painful rearing of sons whom the State takes 
away from her as soon as they are of use, pain- 
ful ending of life on grudged crusts as a burden 
to others on a hearth no longer her own. This 
stripped of glamour is the lot nine times out of 
ten of the female peasant — a creature of burden 
like the cow she yokes, an animal valued only in 
her youth and her prime ; in old age or in sickness 
like the stricken and barren goat, who has nought 
but its skin and its bones. 

Poor little Nerina! 


The Waters of Edera 91 

As he went home he saw her cutting fodder for 
a calf; she was kneeling in a haze of rose colour 
made by the many blossoms of the orchis maculata 
which grew there. The morning light sparkled 
in the wet grass. She got up as she saw him cross 
the field, dropped her curtsey low with a smile, 
then resumed her work, the dew, the sun, the 
sweet fresh scents shed on her like a benison. 

“ Poor little soul,” thought Don Silverio. 
“ Poor little soul ! Has Adone no eyes ? ” 

Adone had eyes, but they saw other things than 
a little maiden in the meadow-grass. 

To her he was a deity; she believed in him and 
worshipped him with the strongest faith as a little 
sister might have done. She would have fought 
for him like a little mastiff; she would have suf- 
fered in his service with rapture and pride; she 
was as vigilant for his interests as if she were 
fidelity incarnated. She watched over all that be- 
longed to him, and the people of Ruscino feared 
her more than they feared Pierino the watch-dog. 
Woe-betided the hapless wight who made free 
with the ripe olives, or the ripe grapes, with the 
fig or the peach or the cherry which grew on 
Adone’ s lands; it seemed to such marauders that 
she had a thousand eyes and lightning in her feet. 


The Waters of Edera 


92 

One day, when she had dealt such vigorous 
blows with a blackthorn stick on the back of a 
lad who had tried to enter the fowl-house, that he 
fell down and shrieked for pardon, Adone re- 
proved her. “ Remember they are very poor, 
Nerina,” he said to her. “ So were your own 
folks, you say.” 

•“ I know they are poor,” replied Nerina. She 
held to her opinions. “ But when they ask, you 
always give. Therefore it is vile to rob you. 
Besides,” she added, “ if you go on and let them 
steal they do not thank you; and they will steal 
and steal and steal till you will have nothing left.” 

Whatever she saw, whatever she heard, she 
told Adone; and he gave ear to her because she 
was not a chatterer, but was usually of few words. 
All her intelligence was spent in the defence and 
in the culture of the Terra Vergine; she did not 
know her alphabet, and did not wish to do so ; but 
she had the quickest of ears, the keenest of eyes, 
the brightest of brains. 

One morning she came running to him where 
he was cutting barley. 

“ Adone ! Adone ! ” she cried breathlessly, 
“ there were strange men by the river to-day.” 

“ Indeed,” said Adone astonished, although 


The Waters of Edera 


93 


strangers were never seen there. Ruscino was 
near no highroad, and the river had long ceased 
to be navigable. 

“ They asked me questions, but I put my hands 
to my ears and shook my head; they thought I 
was deaf.” 

“ What sort of men were they? ” he asked with 
more attention, for there were still those who 
lived by violence up in the forests which overhung 
the valley of the Edera. 

“ How do I know ? They were clothed in long 
woollen bed-gowns, and they had boots on their 
feet, and on their heads hats shaped like kitchen- 
pans.” 

Adone smiled. He saw men from a town, or 
country fellows who aped such men, with a con- 
tempt which was born at once of that artistic 
sense of fitness which was in him, and of his ad- 
herence to the customs and habits of his province. 
The city-bred and city-clothed man looked to him 
a grotesque and helpless creature, much sillier 
than an ape. 

“ That sounds like citizens or townsfolk. What 
did they say ? ” 

“ I could not understand ; but they spoke of 
the water, I think, for they pointed to it and said 


The Waters of Edera 


94 

a great deal which I did not understand, and 
seemed to measure the banks, and took your punt 
and threw a chain into the water in places.” 

“Took castings? Used my punt? That is 
odd ! I have never seen a stranger in my life by 
the Edera. Were they anglers? ” 

“ No.” 

“Or sportsmen?” 

“ They had no guns.” 

“ How many were they ? ” 

“ Three. They went away up the river talk- 
ing.” 

“ Did they cross the bridge? ” 

“ No. They were not shepherds, or labourers, 
or priests,” said Nerina. In these classes of men 
her own acquaintance was confined. 

“ Painters, perhaps ! ” said Adone ; but no 
artists were ever seen there; the existence even 
of the valley was scarcely known, except to to- 
pographers. 

“ What are painters? ” said Nerina. 

“ Men who sit and stare and then make 
splashes of colour.” 

“ No ; they did not do that.” 

“ It is strange.” 

He felt vaguely uneasy that any had come near 


The Waters of Edera 95 

the water; as a lover dislikes the pressure of a 
crowd about his beloved in a street, so he disliked 
the thought of foreign eyes resting on the Edera. 
That they should have used his little punt, always 
left amongst the sedges, seemed to him a most 
offensive and unpardonable action'. 

He went to the spot where the intruders had 
been seen, but there was no trace of them, except 
that the wet sand bore footprints of persons who 
had, as she had said of them, worn boots. He 
followed these footprints for some mile or more 
up the edge of the stream, but there he lost them 
from sight; they had passed on to the grass of a 
level place, and the dry turf, cropped by sheep to 
its roots, told no tales. Near this place was a 
road used by cattle drivers and mules; it crossed 
the heather for some thousand yards, then 
plunged into the woods, and so up over the hills 
to the town of Teramo, thirty-five kilometres 
away. It was a narrow, rough, steep road, wholly 
unfit for vehicles of any kind more tender than the 
rude ox-treggia, slow as a snail, with rounds of a 
tree-trunk for its wheels and seldom used except 
by country folks. 

He would have asked Don Silverio if he had 
heard or seen anything of any strangers, but the 


The Waters of Edera 


96 

priest was away that day at one of the lonely 
moorland cabins comprised in his parish of Rus- 
cino, where an old man, who had been a great sin- 
ner in his past, was at his last gasp, and his sons 
and grandsons and great-grandchildren all left 
him to meet his end as he might. 

It was a fine day, and they had their grain 
to get in, and even the women were busy. They 
set a stoup of water by him, and put some in his 
nostrils, and shut the door to keep out the flies. 
It was no use to stay there they thought. If you 
helped a poor soul to give up the ghost by a hand 
on his mouth, or an elbow in his stomach, you got 
into trouble; it was safer to leave him alone, 
when he was a-dying. 

Don Silverio had given the viaticum to the old 
man the night before, not thinking he would out- 
live the night. He now found the door locked 
and saw the place was deserted. He broke the 
door open with a few kicks, and found the house 
empty save for the dying creature on the sacks of 
leaves. 

“ They would not wait ! They would not wait 
— hell take them ! ” said the old man, with a 
groan, his bony hands fighting the air. 


The Waters of Edera 


97 

“ Hush, hush ! the holy oil is on you,” said 
Don Silverio. “ They knew I should be here.” 

It was a charitable falsehood, but the brain of 
the old man was still too awake to be deceived 
by it. 

“ Why locked they the door, then ? Hell take 
them ! They are reaping in the lower fields — hell 
take them ! ” he repeated, his bony, toothless jaws 
gnashing with each word. 

He was eighty-four years old; he had been 
long the terror of his district and of his descend- 
ants, and they paid him out now that he was 
powerless; they left him alone in that sun-baked 
cabin, and they had carefully put his crutch out 
of reach so that if any force should return to his 
paralysed body he should be unable to move. 

It was the youngest of them all, a little boy of 
seven years old, who had thought to do that ; the 
crutch had hit him so often. 

The day had been only beginning when Don 
Silverio had reached the cabin, but he resolved to 
kwait there the return of the family; its hours 
were many and long and cruel in the midsummer 
heat, in this foetid place where more than a score of 
men, women, and children of all ages slept and 
swarmed through every season, and where the 


98 The Waters of Edera 

floors of beaten earth were paven with filth three 
millimetres thick. The people were absent, but 
their ordure, their urine, their lice, their saliva 
were left there after them, and the stench of all 
was concentrated on this bed where the old man 
wrestled with death. 

Don Silverio stayed on in the sultry and pesti- 
lent steam which rose up from the floor. Gnats 
and flies of all kinds buzzed in the heavy air, or 
settled in black knots on the walls and the rafters. 
With a bunch of dried maize leaves he drove them 
off the old man’s face and hands and limbs, and 
ever and again at intervals gave the poor creature 
a draught of water with a few drops in it from a 
phial of cordial which he had brought with him. 
The hours passed, each seeming longer than a 
day; at last the convulsive twitching of the jaws 
ceased; the jaw had fallen, the dark cavern of the 
toothless mouth yawned in a set grimace, the 
vitreous eyes were turned up into the head ; the old 
man was dead. But Don Silverio did not leave 
him; two sows and a hog were in a stye which 
was open to the house ; he knew that they would 
come and gnaw the corpse if it were left to them ; 
they were almost starving, and grunted angrily. 

He spent so many vigils similar to this that the 


The Waters of Edera 99 

self-sacrifice entailed in them never struck either 
him or those he served. 

When the great heat had passed he set the door 
wide open; the sun was setting; a flood of light 
inundated the plain from the near mountains on 
the west, where the Leonessa towered, to those 
shadowy green clouds which far away in the east 
were the marshes before the sea. Through the 
ruddy glory of the evening the family returned, 
dark figures against the gold; brown women, 
half-nude men, footsore children, their steps drag- 
ging reluctantly homeward. 

At the sight of the priest on the threshold they 
stopped and made obeisance humbly in reverent 
salutation. 

“ Is he dead, most reverend ? ” said the eldest 
of the brood, a man of sixty, touching the ground 
with his forehead. 

“ Your father is dead,” said Don Silverio. 

The people were still ; relieved to hear that all 
was over, yet vaguely terrified, rather by his gaze 
than by his words. A woman wept aloud out of 
fear. 

“ We could not let the good grain spoil,” said 
the eldest man, with some shame in his voice. 

“ Pray that your sons may deal otherwise with 


IOO 


The Waters of Edera 


you when your turn shall come,” said Don Sil- 
verio; and then he went through them, unmoved 
by their prayers and cries, and passed across the 
rough grass-land out of sight. 

The oldest man, he who was now head of the 
house, remained prostrate on the threshold and 
beat the dust with his hands and heels ; he was 
afraid to enter, afraid of that motionless, lifeless 
bag of bones of which the last cry had been a 
curse cast at him. 

Don Silverio went on his way over the moors 
homeward, for he had no means except his own 
limbs whereby to go to his scattered parishioners. 
When he reached the village and climbed its 
steep stones night had long fallen and he was 
sorely tired. He entered by a door which was 
never locked, and found an oil wick burning on 
his table, which was set out with the brown 
crockery used for his frugal supper of cheese and 
lettuces and bread. His old servant was abed. His 
little dog alone was on the watch, to welcome him. 
It was a poor plain place with whitewashed walls 
and a few necessary articles of use; but it was 
clean and sweet, its brick floors were sanded, and 
the night air blew in from its open casement with 
the freshness from the river in it. Its quiet was 


The Waters of Edera ioi 

seldom disturbed except by the tolling of the bell 
for church services; it was welcome to him after 
the toil and heat and stench of the past day. 

“ My lot might have been worse,” he thought, 
as he broke his loaf ; he was disinclined to eat ; 
the filthy odours of the cabin pursued him. 

He was used to have had a little weekly journal 
sent to him by the post which came at rare inter- 
vals on an ass’s back to Ruscino, the ass and his 
rider with a meal sack half filled by the meagre 
correspondence of the district, making the rounds 
of that part of the province with an irregularity 
which seemed as natural to the sufferers by it as 
to the postman himself. He cannot be every- 
where at once they said of him with indulgence. 

When Don Silverio reached home that evening 
the little news-sheet was lying on his table beside 
the rude brown crockery set out for his supper, 
with cheese, lettuces, and bread. He scarcely 
touched the food, he was saddened and sickened 
by the day he had passed, although there had been 
nothing new in it, nothing of which he had not 
been witness a hundred times in the cabins of his 
parishioners. The little paper caught his eye, he 
took it and opened it. It was but a meagre thing, 
tardy of news, costing only two centimes, but it 


102 


The Waters of Edera 


was the only publication which brought him any 
news of the outer world from which he was as 
much separated as though he had been on a de- 
serted isle in mid-ocean. 

By the pale light of a single wick, he turned 
over its thin sheet to distract his thoughts ; there 
was war news in east and west, Church news in 
his own diocese and elsewhere ; news of fires and 
wrecks, of suicides, of thefts, news all ten days 
old and more ; political news also, scanty and tim- 
idly related. The name of the stream running 
underneath the walls of Ruscino caught his re- 
gard ; a few lines were headed with it, and these 
lines said curtly: 

The project to divert the course of the Edera 
river will be brought before the Chamber shortly: 
the Minister of Agriculture is considered to fa- 
vour the project.” 

He held the sheet nearer to the light and 
read the paragraph again, and yet again. The 
words were clear and indisputable in their 
meaning, they could not be misconstrued. There 
was but one river Edera in the whole province, in 
the whole country ; there could be no doubt as to 
what river was meant ; yet it seemed to him utterly 
impossible that any such project could be con- 


The Waters of Edera 103 

ceived by any creature. Divert the course of the 
Edera? He felt stupefied. He read the words 
over and over again; then he read them aloud in 
the stillness of the night, and his voice sounded 
strong in his own ears. 

“ It must be a misprint ; it must be a mistake 
for the Era of Volterra or the Esino, north of 
Ancona,” he said to himself, and he went to 
his book closet and brought out an old folio 
geography which he had once bought for a 
few pence on a Roman bookstall, spread it open 
before him, and read one by one the names of all 
the streams of the peninsula, from the Dora Bal- 
tea to the Giarretta. There was no other Edera 
river. Unless it were indeed a misprint altogether 
the stream which flowed under his church walls 
was the one which was named in the news-sheet. 

“ But it is impossible, it is impossible ! ” he said 
so loudly that his little dog awoke and climbed on 
his knee uneasily and in alarm. “ What could 
the people do? What could the village do or the 
land or the fisher folk? Are we to have drought 
added to hunger? Can they respect nothing? The 
river belongs to the valley; to seize it, to appraise 
it, to appropriate it, to make away with it, 


104 The Waters of Edera 

would be as monstrous as to steal his mother’s 
milk from a yearling babe ! ” 

He shut the folio and pushed it away from him 
himself. “ If, anyhow, this monstrous thing be 
himself. “ If anyhow this monstrous thing be 
true, it will kill Adone.” 

In the morning he awoke from a short per- 
turbed sleep with that heavy sense of a vaguely 
remembered calamity which stirs in the awaken- 
ing brain like a worm in the unclosing flower. 

The morning office over he sought out the little 
news-sheet, to make sure that he had read aright ; 
his servant had folded it up and laid it aside on a 
shelf, he unfolded it with a hand which trembled ; 
the same lines stared at him in the warm light of 
sunrise as in the faint glimmer of the floating 
wick. The very curtness and coldness of the an- 
nouncement testified to its exactitude. He did 
not any longer doubt its truth; but there were 
no details, no explanations; he pondered on the 
possibilities of obtaining them; it was useless to 
seek them in the village or the countryside, the 
people were as ignorant as sheep. 

Adone alone had intelligence, but he shrank 
from taking these tidings to the youth, as he 
would have shrunk from doing him a physical 


-The Waters of Edera 105 

hurt. The news might be false or premature; 
many projects were discussed, many schemes 
sketched out, many speculations set on foot which 
came to nothing in the end; were this thing true 
Adone would learn it all too soon and read it on 
the wounded face of nature. Not at least until 
he could himself be certain of its truth would he 
speak of it to the young man whose fathers had 
been lords of the river. 

His duties over for the forenoon, he went up the 
three hundred stairs of his bell-tower, to the 
wooden platform, between the machicolations. 
It was a dizzy height, and both stairs and 
roof were in ruins, but he went cautiously, 
and was familiar with the danger. The owls 
which bred there were so used to him that they did 
not stir in their siesta as he passed them. He 
stood aloft in the glare of noonday and looked 
down on the winding stream as it passed under 
the ruined walls of Ruscino, and growing, as it 
flowed, clearer and clearer, and wilder and wilder, 
as it rushed over stones and boulders, foaming and 
shouting, rushed through the heather on its way 
towards the Marches. Under Ruscino it had its 
brown mountain colour still, but as it ran it grew 
green as emeralds, blue as sapphires, silver and 


io6 The Waters of Edera 

white and grey like a dove’s wings; it was un- 
sullied and translucent ; the white clouds were re- 
flected on it. It went through a country lonely, 
almost deserted, only at great distances from one 
another was there a group of homesteads, a cluster 
of stacks, a conical cabin in some places where the 
woods gave place to pasture ; here and there were 
the ruins of a temple, of a fortress, of some great 
marble or granite tomb; but there was no living 
creature in sight except a troop of buffaloes 
splashing in a pool. 

Don Silverio looked down on its course until 
his dazzled eyes lost it from sight in the glory of 
light through which it sped, and his heart sank, 
and he would fain have been a woman to have 
wept aloud. For he saw that its beauty and its 
solitude were such as would likely enough tempt 
the spoilers. He saw that it lay fair and defence- 
less as a maiden on her bed. 

He dwelt out of the world now, but he had 
once dwelt in it; and the world does not greatly 
change, it only grows more rapacious. He knew 
that in this age there are only one law to gain, 
only one duty, to prosper; that nature is of no 
account, nor beauty either, nor repose, nor ancient 
rights, nor any of the simple claims of normal jus- 


The Waters of Edera 107 

tice. He knew that if in the course of the river 
there would be gold for capitalists, for engineers, 
lor contractors, for promoters, for speculators, 
for attorneys, for deputies, for ministers, that 
then the waters of the Edera were in all prob- 
ability doomed. 

He descended the rotten stairs slowly, with a 
weight as of lead at his heart. He did not any 
longer doubt the truth of what he had read. Who 
or what shall withstand the curse of its time ? 

“ They have forgotten us so long,” he thought, 
with bitterness in his soul. “We have been left 
to bury our dead as we would, and to see the 
children starve as they might; they remember us 
now because we possess something which they 
can snatch from us.” 

He did not doubt any more. He could only 
wait : wait and see in what form and in what 
time the evil would come to them. Meantime, 
he said to himself, he would not speak of it to 
Adone, and he burned the news-sheet. Adminis- 
trations alter frequently and unexpectedly, and A 
the money-changers, who are fostered by them, / 
sometimes fall with them, and their projects re- 
main in the embryo of a mere prospectus. There 
was that chance. 


io8 


The Waters of Edera 


He knew that in the age he lived in, all things 
were only estimated by their value to commerce 
or to speculation ; that there was neither space 
nor patience amongst men for what was, in their 
reckoning, useless; that the conqueror was now 
but a trader in disguise; that civilisation was but 
the shibboleth of traffic ; that because trade follows 
the flag, therefore to carry the flag afar, thou- 
sands of young soldiers of every nationality are 
slaughtered annually in poisonous climes and ob- 
scure warfare, because such is the supremo, lex 
and will of the trader. If the waters of Edera 
would serve to grind any grit for the mills of mod- 
ern trade they would be taken into bondage with 
many other gifts of nature as fair and as free as 
they were. All creation groaned and travailed 
in pain that the great cancer of the cities should 
spread. 

“ It is not only ours,” he remembered with a 
pang; on its way to and from the Vald’edera the 
river passed partially through two other com- 
munes, and water belongs to the district in which 
it runs. True, the country of each of these was 
like that of this valley, depopulated and wild ; but, 
however great a solitude any land may be, it is still 
locally and administratively annexed to and owned 


The Waters of Edera 109 

by the town which it is municipality. Ruscino 
and its valley were dependent on San Beda ; these 
two other communes were respectively under a 
little town of the Abruzzi and under a seaport of 
the Adriatic. 

The interest of the valley of the Edera in its 
eponymous stream was the largest share; but it 
was not more than a share in this gift of nature. 
If it came to any question of conflicting inter- 
ests, Ruscino and the valley might very likely be 
powerless, and could only, in any event, be repre- 
sented by and through San Beda; a strongly ec- 
clesiastical and papal little place, and therefore, 
without influence with the ruling powers, and 
consequently viewed with an evil eye by the Pre- 
fecture. 

He pondered anxiously on the matter for some 
days, then, arduous as the journey was, he re- 
solved to go to San Beda and inquire. 

The small mountain city was many miles away 
upon a promontory of marble rocks, and its many 
spires and towers were visible only in afternoon 
light from the valley of the Edera. It was as old 
as Ruscino, a dull, dark, very ancient place with 
monasteries and convents like huge fortresses and 
old palaces still fortified and grim as death 


I IO 


The Waters of Edera 


amongst them. A Cistercian monastery, which 
had been chiefly builded by the second Giulio, 
crowned a prominent cliff, which dominated the 
town, and commanded a view of the whole of the 
valley of the Edera, and, on the western horizon, 
of the Leonessa and her tributary mountains and 
hills. 

He had not been there for five years ; he went 
on foot, for there was no other means of transit, 
and if there had been he would not have wasted 
money on it; the way was long and irksome; for 
the latter half, entirely up a steep mountain road. 
He started in the early morning as soon as mass 
had been celebrated, and it was four in the after- 
noon before he had passed the gates of the town. 
He rested in the Certosa, of which the superior 
was known to him, and made his first inquiries 
amongst the monks ; they had heard nothing. So 
far as he could learn when he went into the streets 
no one in the place had heard anything of the pro- 
ject to alter the course of the river. He made 
the return journey by night so as to reach his 
church by daybreak, and was there in his place 
by the high altar when the bell tolled at six 
o’clock, and the three or four old people, who 


The Waters of Edera 1 1 1 

never missed an office, were kneeling on the 
stones. 

He had walked over forty miles and had eaten 
nothing except some bread and a piece of dried 
fish. But he always welcomed physical fatigue; 
it served to send to sleep the restless intellect, the 
gnawing regrets, the bitter sense of wasted pow- 
ers and of useless knowledge which were his daily 
company. 

He had begged his friends, the friars, to obtain 
an interview with the Syndic of San Beda, and 
interrogate him on the subject. Until he should 
learn something positive he could not bring him- 
self to speak of the matter to Adone : but the fact 
of his unusual absence had too much astonished 
his little community for the journey not to have 
been the talk of Ruscino. Surprised and disturbed 
like others, Adone was waiting for him in the 
sacristy after the first mass. 

“ You have been away a whole day and night 
and never told me, reverendissimo ! ” he cried in 
reproach and amazement. 

“ I have yet to learn that you are my keeper,” 
said Don Silverio with a cold and caustic intona- 
tion. 

Adone coloured to the roots of his curling hair. 


I I 2 


The Waters of Edera 


“ That is unkind, sir ! ” he said humbly ; “ I 
only meant that — that ” 

“ I know, I know ! ” said the priest impatiently, 
but with contrition. “ You meant only friend- 
ship and good-will ; but there are times when the 
best intentions irk one. I went to see the Prior of 
the Certosa, an old friend ; I had business in San 
Beda.” 

Adone was silent, afraid that he had shown an 
unseemly curiosity; he saw that Don Silverio 
was irritated and not at ease, and he hesitated 
what words to choose. 

His friend relented, and blamed himself for 
being hurried by disquietude into harshness. 

“ Come and have a cup of coffee with me, 
my son,’ he said in his old, kind tones. “ I am 
going home to break my fast.” 

But Adone was hurt and humiliated, and made 
excuse of field work, which pressed by reason of 
the weather, and so he did not name to his friend 
and councillor the visit of the three men to the 
river. 

Don Silverio went home and boiled his coffee; 
he always did this himself ; it was the only luxury 
he ever allowed himself, and he did not indulge 
even in this very often. But for once the draught 


The Waters of Edera 


IJ 3 


had neither fragrance nor balm for him. He was 
overtired, weary in mind as in body, and greatly 
dejected; even though nothing was known at San 
Beda he felt convinced that what he had read was 
the truth. 

He knew but little of affairs of speculation, but 
he knew that it was only in reason to suppose that 
such projects would be kept concealed, as long as 
might be expedient, from those who would be 
known to be hostile to them, in order to minimize 
the force of opposition. 


VI 

On the morning of the fourth day which fol- 
lowed on the priest’s visit to San Beda, about ten 
in the forenoon, Adone, with his two oxen, Or- 
lando and Rinaldo were near the river on that 
part of his land which was still natural moorland, 
and on which heather, and ling, and broom, and 
wild roses, and bracken grew together. He had 
come to cut a waggon load of furze, and had 
been at work there since eight o’clock, when 
he had come out of the great porch of the 
church after attending mass, for it was the 
twentieth of June, the name-day of Don Sil verio. 

Scarcely had that day dawned when Adone had 
risen and had gone across the river to the presby- 
tery, bearing with him a dozen eggs, two flasks 
of his best wine, and a bunch of late-flowering 
roses. They were his annual offerings on this 
day; he felt some trepidation as he climbed the 
steep, stony, uneven street lest they should be re- 
114 


The Waters of Edera 1 1 5 

jected, for he was conscious that three evenings 
before he had offended Don Silverio, and had 
left the presbytery too abruptly. But his fears 
were allayed as soon as he entered the house; 
the vicar was already up and dressed, and was 
about to go to the church. At the young man’s 
first contrite words Don Silverio stopped him 
with a kind smile. 

“ I was impatient and to blame,” he said as he 
took the roses. “ You heap coals of fire on my 
head, my son, with your welcome gifts.” 

Then together they had gone to the quaint old 
church of which the one great bell was tolling. 

Mass over, Adone had gone home, broken his 
fast, taken off his velvet jacket, his long scarlet 
waistcoat, and his silver-studded belt, and put the 
oxen to the pole of the waggon. 

“ Shall I come? ” cried Nerina. 

“ No,” he answered. “ Go and finish cutting 
the oats in the triangular field.” 

Always obedient, she went, her sickle swinging 
to her girdle. She was sorry, but she never mur- 
mured. 

Adone had been at work amongst the furze two 
hours when old Pierino, who always accompanied 
the oxen, got up, growled, and then barked. 


1 1 6 The Waters of Edera 

“ What is it, old friend?” asked Adone, and 
left off his work and listened. He heard voices 
by the waterside and steps on the loose shingle 
of its shrunken summer bed. He went out of the 
wild growth round him and looked. There were 
four men standing and talking by the water. 
They were doubtless the same persons as Nerina 
had seen, for they were evidently men from a city 
and strangers. Disquietude and offence took 
alarm in him at once. 

He conquered that shyness which was natural 
to him, and which was due to the sensitiveness 
of his temperament and the solitude in which he 
had been reared. 

“ Excuse me, sirs,” he said, as he advanced to 
them with his head uncovered; “ what is it you 
want wifh my river? ” 

Your river! ” repeated the head of the group, 
and he smiled. “ How is it more yours than your 
fellows?” 

Adone advanced nearer. 

“ The whole course of the water belonged to 
my ancestors,” he answered, “ and this portion at 
least is mine now; you stand on my ground. I 
ask you what is your errand? ” 

He spoke with courtesy, but in a tone of 


The Waters of Edera 117 

authority which seemed to the intruders imper- 
ious and irritating. But they controlled their an- 
noyance ; they did not wish to offend this haughty 
young peasant. 

“To be owner of the water it is necessary to 
own both banks of it,” the stranger replied po- 
litely, but with some impatience. “ The opposite 
bank is communal property. Do not fear, how- 
ever, whatever your rights may be they will be 
carefully examined and considered.” 

“ By whom? They concern only myself.” 

M None of our rights concern only ourselves. 
What are those which you claim in especial on the 
Edera water ? ” 

Adone was silent for a few moments; he was 
astonished and embarrassed ; he had never 
reflected on the legal side of his claim to the river ; 
he had grown up in love and union with it; such 
affections, born with us at birth, are not analysed 
until they are assailed. 

“ You are strangers,” he replied. “ By what 
right do you question me? I was born here. 
What is your errand ? ” 

“ You must be Adone Alba? ” said, this person, 
as if spokesman for the others. 

“ I am.” 


1 1 8 The Waters of Edera 

“And you own the land known as the Terra 
Vergine? ” 

“ I do.” 

You will hear from us in due course, then. 
Meantime ” 

“ Meantime you trespass on my ground. Leave 
it, sirs.” 

The four strangers drew away a few paces and 
conferred together in a low tone, consulting a 
sheaf of papers. Their Council over, he who ap- 
peared the most conspicuous in authority turned 
again to the young man, who was watching them 
with a vague apprehension which he could not ex- 
plain to himself. 

“ There is no question of trespass ; the riverside 
is free to all,” said the stranger, with some con- 
tempt. “ Courtesy would become you better, Ser 
Adone.” 

Adone coloured. He knew that courtesy was 
at all times wise and useful and an obligation 
amongst men; but his anger was stronger than 
his prudence and his vague alarm was yet 
stronger still. 

“ Say your errand with the water,” he replied 
imperiously. “ Then I can judge of it. No one, 
sirs, comes hither against my will.” 


The Waters of Edera 1 19 

“ You will hear from us in due time,” answered 
the intruder. “ And believe me, young man, you 
may lose much, you cannot gain anything by rude- 
ness and opposition.” 

M Opposition to what ? ” 

The stranger turned his back upon him, rolled 
up his papers, spoke again with his companions, 
and lifted from a large stone on which he had 
placed it a case of surveyor’s instruments. Adone 
went close up to him. “ Opposition to what? 
What is it you are doing here? ” 

“We are not your servants,” said the gentle- 
man with impatience. “ Do not attempt any 
brawling I advise you; it will tell against you 
and cannot serve you in any way.” 

“ The soil and the water are mine, and you 
meddle with them,” said Adone. “ If you were 
honest men you would not be ashamed of what 
you do, and would declare your errand. Brawling 
is not in my habit ; but either speak clearly, or get 
you gone, or I will drive my oxen over you. The 
land and the waters are mine.” 

The chief of the group gave a disdainful, in- 
credulous gesture, but the others pulled him by 
the sleeve and argued with him in low tones and 
a strange tongue, which Adone thought was 


I 20 


The Waters of Edera 


German. The leader of the group was a small 
man with a keen, mobile face and piercing eyes ; 
he did not yield easily to the persuasions of his 
companions; he was disposed to be combative; 
he was offended by what seemed to him the in- 
sults of a mere peasant. 

Adone went back to his oxen, who were stand- 
ing dozing with drooped heads; he gathered up 
the reins of rope and mounted the waggon, rais- 
ing the drooped heads of the beasts. He held his 
goad in his hand ; the golden gorze was piled be- 
hind him; he was in full sunlight, his hair was 
lifted by the breeze from his forehead; his face 
was flushed and set and stern. They saw that he 
would keep his word and drive down on to them, 
and make his oxen knock them down and the 
wheels grind their bodies into pulp. They had 
no arms of any kind, they felt they had no choice 
but to submit : and did so, with sore reluctance. 

“ He looks like a young god,” said one of them 
with an angry laugh. Mortals cannot fight 
against the gods.” 

With discomfiture they retreated before him 
and went along the grassy path northward, as 
Nerina had seen them do on the day of their first 
arrival. 


The Waters of Edera 


I 2 I 


So far Adone had conquered. 

But no joy or pride of a victor was with him. 
He stood and watched them pass away with a 
heavy sense of impending ill upon him; the river 
was flowing joyously, unconscious of its doom, 
but on him, though he knew nothing and con- 
ceived nothing of the form which the approaching 
evil would take, a great weight of anxiety de- 
scended. 

He got down from the waggon when he had 
seen them disappear, and continued his uninter- 
rupted work amongst the furze ; and he remained 
on the same spot long after the waggon was filled, 
lest in his absence the intruders should return. 
Only when the sun set did he turn the heads of 
the oxen homeward. 

He said nothing to the women, but when he 
had stalled and fed his cattle he changed his 
leathern breeches and put a clean shirt on his 
back, and went down the twilit fields and across 
the water to Ruscino ; he told his mother that he 
would sup with Don Silverio. 

When Adone entered the book-room his friend 
was seated at a deal table laden with volumes and 
manuscripts, but he was neither writing or read- 
ing, nor had he lighted his lamp. The moonlight 


122 The Waters of Edera 

shone through the vine climbing up and covering 
the narrow window. He looked up and saw by 
Adone’s countenance that something was wrong. 

“ What are they coming for, sir, to the river? ” 
said the young man as he uncovered his head on 
the threshold of the chamber. Don Silverio hesi- 
tated to reply; in the moonlight his features 
looked like a mask of a dead man, it was so white 
and its lines so deep. 

“ Why do they come to the river, these 
strangers? ” repeated Adone. “ They would not 
say. They were on my land. I threatened to 
drive my cattle over them. Then they went. But 
can you guess, sir, why they come? ” 

Don Silverio still hesitated. Adone repeated 
his question with .more insistence; he came up to 
the table and leaned his hands upon it, and looked 
down on the face of his friend. 

“ Why do they come? ,, he repeated a fourth 
time. “ They must have some reason. Surely 
you know ? ” 

“ Listen, Adone, and control yourself,” said 
Don Silverio. 

“ I saw something in a journal a few days 
ago which made me go to San Beda. But 
there they knew nothing at all of what the news- 


The Waters of Edera 123 

paper had stated. What I said startled and 
alarmed them. I begged the Prior to acquaint 
me if he heard of any scheme affecting us. To- 
day only, he has sent a young monk over with a 
letter to me, for it was only yesterday that he 
heard that there is a project in Rome to turn the 
river out of its course, and use it for hydraulic 
power; to what purpose he does not know. The 
townsfolk of San Beda are in entire sympathy 
with this district and against the scheme, which 
will only benefit a foreign syndicate. That is all I 
know, for it is all he knows ; he took his informa- 
tion direct from the syndic, Count Corradini. 
My boy, my dear boy, control yourself ! ” 

Adone had dropped down on a chair, and lean- 
ing his elbow on the table hid his face upon his 
hands. A tremor shook his frame from head to 
foot. 

“ I knew it was some devilry,” he muttered. 
“ Oh, Lord ! oh, Lord ! would that I had made 
the oxen trample them into a thousand pieces! 
They ought never to have left my field alive ! ” 

“ Hush, hush ! ” said the priest sternly. “ I 
cannot have such language in my house. Com- 
pose yourself.” 


124 


The Waters of Edera 


Adone raised his head; his eyes were alight as 
with fire; his face was darkly red. 

“ What, sir ! You tell me the river is to be 
taken away from us, and you ask me to be calm ! 
It is not in human nature to bear such a wrong in 
peace. Take away the Edera! Take away the 
water ! They had better cut our throats. What ! 
a poor wretch who steals a few grapes off a vine, 
a few eggs from a hen roost, is called a thief and 
hounded to the galley, and such robbery as this 
is to be borne in silence because the thieves wear 
broadcloth ! It cannot be. It cannot be ; I swear 
it shall never be whilst I have life. The river is 
mine. We reigned here a thousand years and 
more; you have told me so. It is written there 
on the parchments. I will hold my own.” 

Don Silverio was silent; he was silent from 
remorse. He had told Adone what, without him 
Adone would have lived and died without know- 
ing or dreaming. He had thought only to stimu- 
late the youth to gentle conduct, honourable 
pride, perhaps to some higher use of his abilities : 
no more than this. 

He had never seen the young man thus violent 
and vehement ; he had always found him tranquil 
to excess, difficult to rouse, slow to anger, indeed 


The Waters of Edera 125 

almost incapable of it ; partaking of the nature of 
the calm and docile cattle with whom so much of 
his time was passed. But under the spur of an 
intolerable menace the warrior’s blood which 
slumbered in Adone leapt to action; all at once 
the fierce temper of the lords of Ruscino displayed 
its fire and its metal; it was not the peasant of 
the Terra Vergine who was before him now, but 
the heir of the siegneury of the Rocca. 

“ It is not only what I told him of his race,” he 
thought. “ If he had known nothing, none the 
less would the blood in his veins have stirred and 
the past have moved him.” 

Aloud he said : 

“ My son, I feel for you from the depths of my 
soul. I feel with you also. For if these foreign- 
ers take the river-water from us what will become 
of my poor, desolate people, only too wretched al- 
ready as they are? You would not be alone in 
your desperation, Adone. But do not let us take 
alarm too quickly. This measure is in gestation ; 
but it may never come to birth. Many such pro- 
jects are discussed which from one cause or an- 
other are not carried out; this one must pass 
through many preliminary phases before it be- 
comes fact. There must be surely many vested 


The Waters of Edera 


126 . 

rights which cannot with impunity be invaded. 
Take courage. Have patience.” 

He paused, for he saw that for the first time 
since they had known each other, Adone was not 
listening to him. 

Adone was staring up at the moon which hung, 
golden and full, in the dark blue sky, seeming 
framed in the leaves and coils of the vine. 

“ The river is mine,” he muttered. “ The river 
and I are as brothers. They shall kill me before 
they touch the water.” 

“ He will go mad or commit some great 
crime,” thought his friend, looking at him. “ We 
must move every lever and strain every nerve, to 
frustrate this scheme, to prevent this spoliation. 
But if the thieves see money in it who shall stay 
their hands ? ” 

He rose and laid his hands on Adone’s should- 
ers. 

“ To-night you are in no fitting state for calm 
consideration of this possible calamity. Go home, 
my son. Go to your room. Say nothing to your 
mother. Pray* and sleep. In the forenoon come 
to me and we will speak of the measures which it 
may be possible to take to have this matter exam- 
ined and opposed. We are very poor; but still 


The Waters of Edera 127 

we are not altogether helpless. Only, there must 
be no violence. You wrong yourself and you 
weaken a good cause by such wild threats. Good 
night, my son. Go home.” 

The long habit of obedience to his superior, and 
the instinctive docility of his temper compelled 
Adone to submit; he drew a long, deep breath 
and the blood faded from his face. 

Without a word he turned from the table and 
went out of the presbytery into the night and the 
white glory of the moonshine. 


VII 


Don Silverio drew to him his unfinished letter 
to the Prior; the young monk who would take it 
back in the morning to San Beda was already 
asleep in a little chamber above. But he could not 
write, he was too perturbed and too anxious. Al- 
though he had spoken so calmly he was full of 
carking care; both for the threatened evil itself 
and its effect upon his parishioners and especially 
upon Adone. He knew that fin this age it is more 
difficult to check the devouring monster of com- 
mercial covetousness than it ever was to stay the 
Bull of Crete; and that for a poor and friendless 
community to oppose a strong and wealthy band 
of speculators is indeed for the wooden lance to 
shiver to atoms on the brazen shield^ 

He left his writing table and extinguished his 
lamp. Bidding the little dog lie still upon his 
chair, he went through the house to a door 
which opened from it into the bell tower of his 
128 


The Waters of Edera 1 29 

church and which allowed him to go from the 
house to the church without passing out into the 
street. He climbed the belfry stairs once more, 
lighting himself at intervals by striking a wooden 
match; for through the narrow loopholes in the 
walls the moonbeams did not penetrate. He knew 
the way so well that he could have gone up and 
down those rotting stairs even in total darkness, 
and he safely reached the platform of the bell 
tower, though one halting step might have sent 
him in that darkness head foremost to his death. 

He stood there and gazed downwards on the 
moonlit landscape far below, over the roofs and 
the walls of the village towards the open fields and 
the river, with beyond that the wooded country 
and the cultured land known as the Terra Ver- 
gine, and beyond those again the moors, the 
marshes, and the mountains. The moonlight 
shone with intense clearness on the waters of the 
Edera and on the stone causeway of the old one- 
arched bridge. On the bridge there was a figure 
moving slowly; he knew it to be that of Adone. 
Adone was going home. 

He was relieved from the pressure of one im- 
mediate anxiety, but his apprehensions for the 
future were great, both for the young man and 


130 The Waters of Edera 

for the people of Ruscino and its surrounding 
country. To take away their river was to deprive 
them of the little which they had to make life 
tolerable and to supply the means of existence. 
Like all riverain people, they depended chiefly on 
the water, on its fish, its osiers, its sedges, its sal- 
lows, its flags, its sand; and its various branches 
and its winter overflow nourished the fields which 
they owned around it, and the only corn-mill of 
the district worked by a huge wheel in its water. 
If the river were turned out of its course above 
Ruscino the whole of this part of the vale would 
be made desolate. 

Life was already hard for the human creatures 
in these fair scenes on which he looked; without 
the river their lot would be famine, would be 
death. 

“ Forbid it, oh, Lord ! forbid this monstrous 
wrong,” he said, as he stood with bared head un- 
der the starry skies. 

When the people of a remote place are smitten 
by a public power the blow falls on them as unin- 
telligible in its meaning, as invisible in its agency, 
as a thunderbolt is to the cattle whom it slays in 
their stalls. Even Don Silverio, with his classic 
culture and his archaeological learning, had little 


The Waters of Edera 1 3 1 

comprehension of the means and methods by 
which these enterprises were combined and car- 
ried out; the world of commerce and speculation 
is as aloof from the scholar and the recluse as the 
rings of Saturn or the sun of Aldebaran. Its 
mechanism, its intentions, its combinations, its 
manners of action, its ways of expenditure, its 
intrigues with banks and governments : all these 
to men who dwell in rural solitudes, aloof from 
the babble of crowds, are utterly unknown; the 
very language of the Bourses has no more mean- 
ing to them than the jar of wheels or roar of 
steam. 

He stood and looked with a sinking heart on 
the quiet, moonlit country, and the winding 
course of the water where it flowed, now silvery 
in the light, now black in the gloom, passing 
rapidly through the heather and the willows un- 
der the gigantic masses of the Etruscan walls. It 
seemed to him to the full as terrible as to Adone ; 
but it did not seem to him so utterly impossible, 
because he knew more of the ways of men and of 
their unhesitating and immeasurable cruelty 
whenever their greed was excited. If the fury of 
speculation saw desirable prey in the rape of the 


132 The Waters of Edera 

Edera then the Edera was doomed like the daugh- 
ter of yEdipus or the daughter of Jephtlia. 

Adone had gone across the bridge, but he had 
remained by the waterside. 

“ Pray and sleep ! ” Don Silverio had said in 
his last words. But to Adone it seemed that 
neither prayer nor sleep would ever come to him 
again so long as this impending evil hung over 
him and the water of Edera. 

He spent the first part of the summer night 
wandering aimlessly up and down his own bank, 
blind to the beauty of the moonlight, deaf to the 
songs of the nightingales, his mind filled with one 
thought. An hour after midnight he went home 
and let himself into the silent house by a small 
door which opened at the back, and which he 
used on such rare occasions as he stayed out late. 
He struck a match and went up to his room, and 
threw himself, dressed, upon his bed. His mother 
was listening for his return, but she did not call 
to him. She knew he was a man now, and must 
be left to his own will. 

“ What ails Adone that he is not home? ” had 
asked old Gianna. Clelia Alba had been herself 
perturbed by his absence at that hour, but she had 
answered : 


The Waters of Edera 133 

“ What he likes to tell, he tells. Prying ques- 
tions make false tongues. I have never ques- 
tioned him since he was breeched.” 

“ There are not many women like you,” had 
said Gianna, partly in admiration, half in im- 
patience. 

“ Adone is a boy for you and me,” had replied 
his mother. “ But for himself and for all oth- 
ers he is a man. We must remember it.” 

Gianna had muttered mumbled, rebellious 
words ; he did not seem other than a child to her ; 
she had been one of those present at his birth on 
the shining sands of the Edera. 

He could not sleep. He could only listen to the 
distant murmur of the river. With dawn the 
women awoke. Nerina came running down the 
steep stone stair and went to let out and feed her 
charges, the fowls. Gianna went to the well in 
the court with her bronze pitcher and pail. Clelia 
Alba cut great slices of bread at the kitchen table 
and hooked the cauldron of maize flour to the 
chain above the fire on the kitchen hearth. He 
could not wait for their greetings, their ques- 
tions, the notice which his changed mien would 
surely attract. For the first time in all his 
twenty-four years of life he went out of the house 


1 34 The Waters of Edera 

without a word to his mother, and took his way 
to the river again ; for the first time he was neg- 
lectful of his cattle and forgetful of the land. 

Nerina came in from the fowl-house with 
alarm on her face. 

“ Madame Clelia ! ” she said timidly, “ Adone 
has gone away without feeding and watering the 
oxen. May I do it?” 

“ Can you manage them, little one ? ” 

“ Oh, yes; they love me.” 

“ Go then; but take care.” 

“ She is a good child ! ” said Gianna. “ The 
beasts won’t hurt her. They know their friends.” 

Clelia Alba, to whom her own and her son’s 
dignity was dear, said nothing of her own dis- 
pleasure and surprise at Adone’s absence. But 
she was only the more distressed by it. Never 
since he had been old enough to work at all had 
he been missing in the hours of labour. 

“ I only pray,” she thought, “ that no woman 
may have hold of him.” 

Adone hardly knew what he did ; he was like a 
man who has had a blow on the temple ; his sight 
was troubled; his blood seemed to burn in his 
brain. He wandered from habit through the 
fields and down to the river, to the spot where 


The Waters of Edera 1 35 

from his infancy he had been used to bathe. He 
took off his clothes and waded into the water, 
which was cold as snow after the night. The 
shock of the cold and the sense of the running 
current laving his limbs, restored him in a measure 
to himself. He swam down the stream in the 
shadow of the early morning. The air was full 
of the scent of dog-roses and flowering thyme ; he 
turned on his back and floated; between him and 
the sky a hawk passed ; the bell of the church was 
tolling for the diurnal mass. He ran along in the 
sun as it grew warm, to dry his skin by move- 
ment, as his wont was. He was still stupefied by 
the fear which had fallen upon him ; but the water 
had cooled and braced him. 

He had forgotten his mother, the cattle, the 
labours awaiting him ; his whole mind was 
absorbed in this new horror sprung up in his 
path, none knew from where, or by whom 
begotten. The happy, unconscious stream ran 
singing at his feet as the nightingale sang in the 
acacia thickets, its brown mountain water grow- 
ing green and limpid as it passed over submerged 
grass and silver sand. 

How could any thieves conspire to take it from 
the country in which it was born? How could 


136 The Waters of Edera 

any dare to catch it and imprison it and put it to 
vile uses? It was a living thing, a free thing, a 
precious thing, more precious than jewel or gold. 
Both jewels and gold the law protected. Could it 
not protect the Edera? 

“ Something must be done,” he said to himself. 
“ But what?” 

He had not the faintest knowledge of what 
could or should be done ; he regretted that he had 
not written his mark with the horns and the hoofs 
of his oxen on the foreign invaders; they might 
never again fall into his power. 

He had never felt before such ferocious or cruel 
instincts as arose in him now. Don Silverio 
seemed to him tame and lukewarm before this 
monstrous conspiracy of strangers. He knew 
that a priest must not give way to anger; yet it 
seemed to him that even a priest should be roused 
to fury here ; there was a wrath which was holy. 

When he was clothed he stood and looked 
down at the gliding stream. 

A feeble, cracked voice called to him from the 
opposite bank. 

“ Adone, my lad, what is this tale? ” 

The speaker was an old man of eighty odd 
years, a native of Ruscino, one Patrizio Cambi, 


The Waters of Edera 137 

who was not yet too feeble to cut the rushes and 
osiers, and maintained a widowed daughter and 
her young children by that means. 

“What tale?” said Adone, unwilling to be 
roused from his own dark thoughts. “ What 
tale, Trizio? ” 

That they are going to meddle with the 
river,” answered the old man. “ They can’t do it, 
can they ? ” 

“ What have you heard ? ” 

“ That they are going to meddle with the 
river.” 

“ In what way ? ” 

“ The Lord knows, or the devil. There was a 
waggon with four horses came as near as it could 
get to us in the woods yonder by Ruffo’s, and the 
driver told Ruffo that the gentry he drove had 
come by road from that town by the sea — I 
forget its name — in order to see the river, this 
river, our river, and that he had brought another 
posse of gentry two weeks or more on the same 
errand, and that they were a-measuring and 
a-plumbing it, and that they were going to get 
possession of it somehow or other, but Ruffo 
could not hear anything more than that; and I 
supposed that you knew, because this part of it is 


138 The Waters of Edera 

yours if it be any man’s; this part of it that runs 
through the Terra Vergine.” 

“ Yes, it is mine,” answered Adone very 
slowly. “ It is mine here, and it was once ours 
from source to sea.” 

“ Aye, it is ours! ” said old Trizio Cambi mis- 
taking him. He was a man once tall, but now 
nearly bent double ; he had a harsh wrinkled face, 
brown as a hazel nut, and he was nearly a skele- 
ton ; but he had eyes which were still fine and still 
had some fire in them. In his youth he had been 
a Garibaldino. 

“ It is ours,” repeated Trizio. “ At least if 
anything belongs to poor folks. What say you, 
Adone?” 

“ Much belongs to the poor, but others take it 
from them,” said Adone. “ You have seen a 
hawk take a sparrow, Trizio. The poor count 
no more than the sparrows.” 

“ But the water is the gift of God,” said the 
old man. 

Adone did not answer. 

“What can we do?” said Trizio, wiping the 
dew off his sickle. “Who knows aught of us? 
Who cares ? If the rich folks want the river they 
will take it, curse them ! ” 


The Waters of Edera 


1 39 

Adone did not answer. He knew that it was 
so, all over the earth. 

“ We shall know no more than birds tangled in 
a net/’ said Trizio. “ They will come and work 
their will.” 

Adone rose up out of the grass. “ I will go 
and see Ruffo,” he said. He was glad to do some- 
thing. 

“ Ruffo knows no more than that,” said Trizio 
angrily. “ The driver of the horses knew no 
more.” 

Adone paid him no heed, but began to push his 
way through the thick network of the interlaced 
heather. He thought that perhaps Ruffo, a man 
who made wooden shoes and hoops for casks and 
shaped chestnut poles for vines, might tell him 
more than had been told to old Trizio; might at 
least be able to suggest from what quarter and in 
what shape this calamity was rising to burst over 
their valley as a hailstorm broods above, then 
breaks on helpless fields and defenceless gardens, 
beating down without warning the birds and the 
blossoms of spring. 

When he had been in Lombardy he had seen 
once a great steam-engine at work, stripping a 
moorland of its natural growth and turning it 


140 The Waters of Edera 

into ploughed land. He remembered how the 
huge machine with its stench of oil and fire had 
forced its way through the furze and ferns and 
wild roses and myrtle, and torn them up and 
flung them on one side, and scattered and 
trampled all the insect life and all the bird life and 
all the hares and field mice and stoats and hedge- 
hogs who made their home there. “ A fine sight,” 
a man had said to him ; and he had answered, “ a 
cursed wickedness.” Was this what they would 
do to the vale of Edera? If they took the river 
they could not spare the land. He felt scared, 
bruised, terrified, like one of these poor moorland 
hares. He remembered a poor stoat who, startled 
out of its sleep, had turned and bitten one of the 
iron wheels of the machine, and the wheel had 
gone over it and crushed it into a mass of blood 
and fur. He was as furious and as helpless as the 
stoat had been. 

When he had walked the four miles which sepa- 
rated the Terra Vergine from the chestnut woods 
where the maker of wooden shoes lived, he heard 
nothing else from Ruffo than this: that gentle- 
men had come from Teramo to study the Edera 
water; they were going to turn it aside and use 


The Waters of Edera 141 

it ; more than that the man who had driven them 
had not heard and could not explain. 

“ There were four horses, and he had nothing 
to give them but water and grass,” said the 
cooper. “ The gentry brought wine and food for 
themselves. They came the day before yesterday 
and slept here. They went away this morning. 
They paid me well, oh, very well. I did what I 
could for them. It is five-and-twenty miles if one 
off Teramo, aye, nearer thirty. They followed 
the old posting road ; but you know where it enters 
the woods it is all overgrown and gone to rack 
and ruin from want of use. In my grandfather’s 
time it was a fine well-kept highway, with post- 
houses every ten miles, though a rare place for 
robbery, but nowadays nobody wants it at all, for 
nobody comes or goes. It will soon be blocked, so 
the driver says: it will soon be quite choked up 
what with brambles, and rocks, and fallen trees, 
and what not. He was black with rage, for he was 
obliged to go back as he had come, and he said he 
had been cheated into the job.” 

Adone listened wearily to the garrulous Ruffo, 
who emphasised each phrase with a blow of his 
little hammer on a shoe. He had wasted all his 
morning hours and learned nothing. He felt like 


142 The Waters of Edera 

a man who is lost in a strange and deserted 
country at night; he could find no clue, could see 
no light. Perhaps if he went to the seaport town 
which was the Prefecture, he might hear some- 
thing ? 

But he had never left the valley of the Edera 
except for that brief time which he had passed 
under arms in the north. He felt that he had no 
means, no acquaintance, no knowledge, whereby 
he could penetrate the mystery of this scheme. 
He did not even know the status of the promoters, 
or the scope of their speculations. The city 
was a port on the Adriatic with considerable 
trade to the Dalmatian and Greek coasts, but he 
scarcely knew its name. If he went there what 
could he do or learn? Would the stones speak, 
or the waves tell that which he thirsted to know? 
What use was the martial blood in his veins? He 
could not strike an invisible foe. 

“ Don’t go to meet trouble half way,” said the 
man Ruffo, meaning well. “I may have mistaken 
the driver. They cannot take hold of a river, how 
should they? Water slips through your fingers. 
Where it was set running in the beginning of the 
world, there it will go on running till the crack of 


The Waters of Edera 143 

doom. Let them look ; let them prate ; they can’t 
take it.” 

But Adone’s reason would not allow him to be 
so consoled. 

He understood a little of what hydraulic science 
can compass; he knew what canalisation meant, 
and its assistance to traffic and trade ; he had seen 
the waterworks on the Po, on the Adige, on the 
Mincio ; he had heard how the Velino had been en- 
slaved for the steel foundry of Terni, how the 
Nerino fed the ironworks of Narni; he had seen 
the Adda captive at Lodi, and the lakes held in 
bond at Mantua ; he had read of the water drawn 
from Monte Amiata, and not very many miles off 
him in the Abruzzo was the hapless Fuscino, 
which had been emptied and dried up by rich 
meddlers of Rome. 

He knew also enough of the past to know how 
water had been forced to serve the will and the 
wants of the Roman Consulate and the Roman 
Empire, of how the marble aqueducts had cast 
the shadow of their arches over the land, and 
how the provinces had been tunnelled and 
bridged and canalised and irrigated during two 
thousand years by those whose bones were dust 
under the Latin soil. He could not wholly 


144 The Waters of Edera 

cheat himself as these unlettered men could do; 
he knew that if the commerce which had succeeded 
the Caesars as ruler of the world coveted the 
waters of Edera, the river was lost to the home of 
its birth and to him. 

How shall I tell my mother? ” he asked him- 
self as he walked back through the fragrant and 
solitary country. He felt ashamed at his own 
helplessness and ignorance. If courage could 
have availed anything he would not have been 
wanting; but all that was needed here was a 
worldly and technical knowledge, of which he pos- 
sessed no more than did the trout in the stream. 

As he neared his home, pushing his way labor- 
iously through the interlaced bracken which had 
never been cut for a score of years, he saw ap- 
proaching him the tall, slender form of Don Sil- 
verio, moving slowly, for the heather was breast 
high, his little dog barking at a startled wood- 
pigeon. 

“ They are anxious about you at the house,” 
Don Silverio said with some sternness. “ Is it 
well to cause your mother this disquietude? ” 

“ No, it is not well/ replied Adone. “ But how 
can I see her and not tell her, and how can I tell 
her this thing? ” 


The Waters of Edera 145 

“ Women to bear trouble are braver than men,” 
said the priest. “ They have more patience in 
pain than We. I have said something to her ; but 
we need not yet despair. We know nothing of 
any certainty. Sometimes such schemes are aban- 
doned at the last moment because too costly or 
too unremunerative. Sometimes they drag on for 
half a lifetime; and at the end nothing comes of 
them.” 

u You have told my mother? ” 

“ I told her what troubles you, and made you 
leave your work undone. The little girl was feed- 
ing the cattle.” 

Adone coloured. He was conscious of the im- 
plied rebuke. 

“ Sir,” he said in a low tone, “ if this accursed 
thing comes to pass what will become of us? 
What I said in my haste last night I say in cold 
reason to-day.” 

“ Then you are wrong, and you will turn a 
calamity into a curse. Men often do so.” 

“ It is more than a calamity.” 

“ Perhaps. Would not some other grief be yet 
worse ? If you were stricken with blindness ? ” 
No; I should still hear the river running.” 

Don Silverio looked at him. He saw by the 


146 The Waters of Edera 

set, sleepless, reckless look on his face that the 
young man was in no mood to be reached by any 
argument, or to be susceptible to either rebuke or 
consolation. The time might come when he 
would be so ; but that time was far off, he feared. 
The evenness, the simplicity, the loneliness of 
Adone’s existence, made it open to impressions, 
and absorbed by them, as busy and changeful lives 
never are; it was like the heather plants around 
them, it would not bear transplanting; its birth- 
place would be its tomb. 

“ Let us go back to your mother/’ he said. 
“Why should you shun her? What you feel she 
feels also. Why leave her alone? ” 

“ I will go home,” said Adone. 

“ Yes, come home. You must see that there is 
nothing to be done or to be learned as yet. When 
they know anything fresh at San Beda they will 
let me know. The Prior is a man of good faith.” 

Adone turned on him almost savagely ; his eyes 
were full of sullen anger. 

“ And I am to bear my days like this ? Know- 
ing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing to 
protect the water that is as dear to me as a 
brother, and the land which is my own? What 


The Waters of Edera 


*47 

will the land be without the river? You forget, 
sir, you forget ! ” 

“ No, I do not forget/’ said Don Silverio with- 
out offence. “ But I ask you to hear reason. 
What can you possibly do? Think you no man 
has been wronged before you? Think you that 
you alone here will suffer? The village will be 
ruined. Do you feel for yourself alone? ” 

Adone seemed scarcely to hear. He was like a 
man in a fever who sees one set of images and 
cannot see anything else. 

“ Sir,” he said suddenly, “ why will you not go 
to Rome? ” 

“ To Rome ? ” echoed the priest in amazement. 

“ There alone can the truth of this thing be 
learned,” said Adone. “ It is to Rome that the 
promoters of this scheme must carry it; there to 
be permitted or forbidden as the Government 
chooses. All these things are brought about by 
bribes, by intrigues, by union. Without authority 
from high office they cannot be done. We here 
do not even know who are buying or selling 


“ No, we do not,” said Don Silverio; and he 
thought, “ When the cart-horse is bought by the 


148 The Waters of Edera 

knacker what matter to him the name of his 
purchaser or his price? ” 

“ Sir,” said Adone, with passionate entreaty. 
“ Do go to Rome. There alone can the truth be 
lerant. You, a learned man, can find means to 
meet learned people. I would go, I would have 
gone yesternight, but when I should get there I 
know no more than a stray dog where to go or 
from whom to inquire. They would see I am a 
country fellow. They would shut the doors in my 
face. But you carry respect with you. No one 
would dare to flout you. You could find ways 
and means to know who moves this scheme, how 
far it is advanced, what chance there is of our de- 
feating it. Go, I beseech you, go ! ” 

“ My son, you amaze me,” said Don Silverio. 
“ I ? In Rome ? I have not stirred out of this dis- 
trict for eighteen years. I am nothing. I have 
no voice. I have no weight. I am a poor rural 
vicar buried here for punishment.” 

He stopped abruptly, for no complaint of the 
injustice from which he suffered had ever in those 
eighteen years escaped him. 

“ Go, go,” said Adone. “ You carry respect 
with you. You are learned and iyill know how 
to find those in power and how to speak to them. 


The Waters of Edera 149 

Go, go ! Have pity on all of us, your poor help- 
less menaced people.” 

Don Silverio was silent. 

Was it now his duty to go into the haunts of 
men, as it had been his duty to remain shut up in 
the walls of Ruscino ? The idea appalled him. 

Accomplished and self-possessed though he 
was, his fine mind and his fine manners had not 
served wholly to protect him from that rust and 
nervousness which come from the disuse of soci- 
ety and the absence of intercourse with equals. 

It seemed to him impossible that he could again 
enter cities, recall usages, seek out acquaintances, 
move in the stir of streets, and wait in ante- 
chambers. 

That was the life of the world; he had done 
with it, forsworn it utterly, both by order of his 
superiors and by willing self-sacrifice. Yet he 
knew that Adone was right. It was only from 
men of the world and amongst them, it was only 
in the great cities that it was possible to follow 
up the clue of such speculations as now threatened 
the vale of Edera. 

The young man he knew could not do what 
was needed, and certainly would get no hearing, 
a peasant of the Abruzzi border who looked like 


The Waters of Edera 


15° 

a figure of Giorgione’s, and would probably be 
arrested as an anarchist if he were to endeavour 
to enter any great house or public office. But to 
go to Rome himself! To revisit the desecrated 
city! This seemed to him a pilgrimage impos- 
sible except for the holiest purpose. He felt as if 
the very stones of Trastevere would rise up and 
laugh at him, a country priest with the moss and 
the mould of a score of years passed in rural ob- 
scurity upon him. Moreover, to revisit Rome 
would be to tear open wounds long healed. There 
his studious youth had been passed, and there his 
ambitious dreams had been dreamed. 

“ I cannot go to Rome,” he said abruptly. “Do 
not ask me, I cannot go to Rome.” 

“ Then I will go,” said Adone, “ and if in no 
other way I will force myself into the king’s 
palace and make him hear.” 

“ And his guards will seize you, and his judges 
will chain you up in a solitary cell for life! Do 
not say such mad things. What could the king 
reply even if he listened, which he would not do? 
He would say that these things were for ministers 
and prefects and surveyors, and engineers to 
judge of not for him or you. Be reasonable, 
Adone; do not speak or act like a fool. This is 


The Waters of Edera i 5 1 

the first grief you have known in your life, and 
you are distraught by it. That is natural enough, 
my poor boy. But you exaggerate the danger. 
It must be far off as yet. It is a mere project.” 

“ And I am to remain here, tilling the land in 
silence and inaction until one day without notice 
I shall see a crowd of labourers at work upon the 
river, and shall see appraisers measuring my 
fields! You know that is how things are done. 
You know the poor are always left in the dark 
until all is ripe for their robbery. Look you, sir, 
if you go to Rome I will wait in such patience as 
I can for whatever you may learn. But if you do 
not go, I go, and if I can do no better I will take 
the king by the throat.” 

“ I have a mind to take you by the throat my- 
self,” said Don Silverio, with an irritation which 
he found it hard to control. “ Well, I will think 
over what you wish, and if I find it possible, if 
I think it justified, if I can afford the means, if I 
can obtain the permission for such a journey, I 
will go to Rome ; for your sake, for your mother’s 
sake. I will let you know my decision later. 
Let us walk homeward. The sun is low. At 
your house the three women must be anxious.” 

Adone accompanied him in silence through the 


152 The Waters of Edera 

heather, of which the blossoming expanse was 
reddening in the light of the late afternoon until 
the land looked a ruby ocean. They did not 
speak again until they reached the confines of the 
Terra Vergine. 

Then Don Silverio took the path which went 
through the pasture to the bridge, and Adone 
turned towards his own dwelling. 

“ Spare your mother. Speak gently,” said the 
elder man; the younger man made a sign of as- 
sent and of obedience. 

“ He will go to Rome,” said Adone to himself, 
and almost he regretted that he had urged the 
journey, for in his own veins the fever of unrest 
and the sting of fierce passions were throbbing, 
and he panted and pined for action. He was the 
heir of the lords of the river. 


VIII 

Like the cooper Ruffo, Clelia Alba had re- 
ceived the tidings with incredulity, though aghast 
at the mere suggestion. 

“ It is impossible/’ she said. She had seen the 
water there ever since she had been a babe in 
swaddling clothes. 

“ It was not possible,” she said, “ that any man 
could be profane enough to alter the bed which 
heaven had given it.” 

But she was sorely grieved to see the effect 
such a fear had upon Adone. 

“ I was afraid it was a woman,” she thought ; 
“ but this thing, could it be true, would be worse 
than any harlot or adulteress. If they took away 
the river the land would perish. It lives by the 
river.” 

“ The river is our own as far as we touch it,” 
she said aloud to her son ; “ but it was the earth’s 
before it was ours. To sever water from the land 


i53 


154 The Waters of Edera 

it lives in were worse than to snatch a child from 
its mother’s womb.” 

Adone did not tell her that water was no more 
sacred than land to the modern constructor. She 
would learn that all too soon if the conspiracy 
against the Edera succeeded. But he tried to 
learn from her what legal rights they possessed to 
the stream: what had his father thought? 
lie knew well that his old hereditary claim to the 
Lordship of Ruscino. however capable of proof, 
would be set aside as fantastic and untenable ; but 
their claim to the water through the holding of 
Terra Virgine could surely not be set aside. 

“ Your father never said aught about the water 
that I can remember,” she answered. “ I think 
he would no more have thought it needful to say 
it was his than to say that you were his son. It 
is certain we are writ down in the district as own- 
ers of the ground; we pay taxes for it; and the 
title of the water must be as one with that.” 

M So say I ; at least over what runs through 
our fields we alone have any title, and for that title 
I will fight to the death,” said Adone. “ River 
rights go with the land through which the river 
passed.” 

“ But, my son,” she said with true wisdom, 


The Waters of Edera 155 

“ your father would never have allowed any 
danger to the water to make him faithless to the 
land. If you let this threat, this dread, turn you 
away from your work, if you let your tears make 
you neglect your fields and your olives, and your 
cattle and your vines, you will do more harm to 
yourself than the worst enemy can do you. To 
leave a farm to itself is to call down the vengeance 
of heaven. A week’s abandonment undoes the 
work of years. I and Gianna and the child do 
what we can, but we are women, and Nerina is 
young.” 

“ I will do what I can, mother,” replied Adone 
humbly. “ But of what use is it to dress and 
manure a vine, if the accursed phylloxera be in its 
sap and at its root? What use is it to till these 
lands if they be doomed to perish from thirst? ” 

“ Do your best,” said his mother, “ then the 
fault will not lie with you, whatever happen.” 

The counsel was sound ; but to Adone all 
savour and hope were gone out of his labour. 
When he saw the green gliding water shine 
through the olive branches and beyond the foliage 
of the walnut-trees his arms fell nerveless to his 
side, his throat swelled with sobs, which he 
checked as they rose, but which were only the 


156 The Waters of Edera 

more bitter for that — all the joy and the peace of 
his day’s work were gone. 

It was but a small space of it to one whose an- 
cestors had reigned over the stream from its rise 
in the oak woods to its fall into the sea; but he 
thought that no one could dispute or diminish or 
disregard his exclusive possession of the Edera 
water where it ran through his fields. They could 
not touch that even if they seized it lower down 
where it ran through other communes. Were 
they to take it above his land, above the bridge 
of Ruscino, its bed here would be dried up and 
his homestead and the village both be ruined. 
The clear, intangible right which he meant to de- 
fend at any cost, in any manner, was his right to 
have the river run untouched through his fields. 
The documents which proved the rights of the 
great extinct Seigneury might be useless, but the 
limited, shrunken right of the present ownership 
was as unassailable as his mother’s right to the 
three strings of pearls; or so he believed. 

The rights of the Lords of Ruscino might be 
but shadows of far-off things, things of tradition, 
of history, of romance, but the rights of the peas- 
ant proprietors of the Terra Vergine must, he 
thought, be respected if there were any justice 


The Waters of Edera 157 

upon earth, for they were plainly writ down in the 
municipal resisters of San Beda. To rouse others 
to defend their equal rights in the same way from 
the source of the Edera to its union with the Adri- 
atic seemed to him the first effort to be made. He 
was innocent enough to believe that it would suf- 
fice to prove that its loss would be their ruin to 
obtain redress at once. 

Whilst Don Silverio was still hesitating as to 
what seemed to him this momentous and painful 
journey to Rome his mind was made up by a 
second letter received from the Superior of the 
Certosa at San Beda, the friend to whom he had 
confided the task of inquiring as to the project for 
the Edera. 

The letter was long, and in Latin. They were 
two classics, who liked thus to refresh themselves 
and each other with epistles such as St. Augustine 
or Tertullian might have penned. The letter was 
of elegant scholarship, but its contents were un- 
welcome. It said that the Most Honourable the 
Syndic of San Beda had enjoyed a conference with 
the Prefect of the province, and it had therein 
transpired that the project for the works upon the 
river Edera had been long well known to the 
Prefect, and that such project was approved by 


158 The Waters of Edera 

the existing Government, and therefore by all the 
Government officials, as was but natural. It was 
not admitted that the Commune of San Beda had 
any local interest or local right sufficiently strong 
to oppose the project, as such a claim would 
amount to a monopoly, and no monopoly 
could exist in a district through which a running 
river partially passed, and barely one-fifth of the 
course of this stream lay through that district 
known as the valley of the Edera. The entire 
Circondario except the valley, was believed to be 
in favour of the project, which the Prefect in- 
formed the Syndic could not be otherwise than 
most favourable to the general interests of the 
country at large. 

“ Therefore, most honoured and revered 
friend,” wrote the Superior of the Cistercians, his 
most esteemed worship does not see his way to 
himself suggest opposition to this course in our 
Town Council or in our Provincial Council, and 
the Most Worshipful the Assessors do not either 
see theirs; it being, as you know, an equivocal 
and onerous thing for either council to express or 
suggest in their assembly views antagonistic to 
those of the Prefecture, so that I fear, most hon- 
oured and reverend friend, it will not be in my 


The Waters of Edera 159 

power farther to press this matter, and I fear also 
that your parish of Ruscino being isolated and 
sparsely populated, and its chief area unculti- 
vated, will be possessed of but one small voice in 
this matter, the interests of the greater number 
being always in such a case preferred.” 

Don Silverio read the letter twice, its stately 
and correct Latinity not serving to disguise the 
mean and harsh fact of its truly modern logic. 
“ Because we are few and poor and weak we have 
no rights ! ” he said bitterly. “ Because the water 
comes from others and goes to others it is not 
ours whilst in our land ! ” 

He did not blame his friend at San Beda. 
Ecclesiastics existed only on sufferance, and 
any day the Certosa might be closed if its inmates 
offended the ruling powers. But the letter, never- 
theless, lay like a stone on his heart. All the 
harshness, the narrowness, the disregard of the 
interests of the weak ; the rude, rough, tyrannical 
pressing onward of the strong to their own selfish 
aims, all the characteristics of the modern world 
seemed to find voice in it and jeer at him. 

It was not for the first time in his life that he 
had pressed against the iron gates of interest and 


160 The Waters of Edera 

formula and oppression, and only bruised his 
breast and torn his hands. 

He had a little sum of money put by in case 
of illness and for his burial; that was the only 
fund on which he could draw to take him to 
Rome and keep him when there, and it was so 
small that it would soon be exhausted. He passed 
the best part of the night doubting which way 
his duty pointed. He fasted, prayed, and com- 
muned with his soul, and at length it seemed to 
him as if a voice from without said to him, 
“ Take up your staff and go.” For the journey 
appalled him, and where his inclination pointed he 
had taught himself to see error. He shrank 
inexpressibly from going into the noise and glare 
and crowd of men; he clung to his solitude as a 
timid criminal to its lair; and therefore he felt 
persuaded that he ought to leave Ruscino on his 
errand, because it was so acutely painful to him. 

Whilst he was gone Adone at least would do 
nothing rash; would of course await the issue of 
his investigations. Time brings council, and time 
he hoped would in this instance befriend him. He 
had already obtained the necessary permission to 
leave his parish ; he then asked for a young friend 
from San Beda to take his place in the village; 


The Waters of Edera 1 6 1 

left his little dog to the care of Nerina; took 
his small hoard in a leathern bag strapped to 
his loins, and went on his way at daybreak 
along the south-west portion of the valley, 
to cover on foot the long distance which lay 
between him and the nearest place at which a 
public Vehicle went twice a week to a railway sta- 
tion whence he could take the train to Terni and 
so to Rome. 

Adone acccompanied him the first half of the 
way, but they said little to one another; their 
hearts were full. Adone could not forget the 
rebuke given to him, and Don Silverio was too 
wise a man to lean heavily on a sore and aching 
wound, or repeat counsels already given and re- 
jected. 

At the third milestone he stopped and begged, 
in a tone which was a command, the young man 
to return home. 

“ Do not leave your land for me,” he said. 
“ Every hour is of gold at this season. Go back, 
my son ! I pray that I may bring you peace.” 

“ Give me your blessing,” said Adone meekly, 
and he knelt down in the dust of the roadside. 
His friend gave it ; then their hands met in silent 
farewell. 


162 


The Waters of Edera 


The sun had risen, and the cold clear air was 
yielding to its rays. The young man reluctantly 
turned back, and left the priest to go onward 
alone, a tall, dark figure in the morning light ; the 
river running between acacia thickets and rushes 
on his right. Before long he would be forced to 
leave the course of the stream, and ascend a rugged 
and precipitous road which mounted southward 
and westward through oak woods into the moun- 
tains between the Leonessa and Gran Sasso, until 
it reached a shrunken, desolate village, with 
fine Etruscan and Roman remains left to per- 
ish, and a miserable hostelry with the miserable 
diligences starting from it on alternate days, the 
only remains of its former posting activity. There 
he arrived late in the evening and broke his fast 
on a basin of bean soup, then rested on a bench, 
for he could not bring himself to enter the filthy 
bed which was alone to be obtained, and spent the 
following morning examining the ancient ruins, 
for the conveyance did not start until four o’clock 
in the afternoon. When that hour came he made 
one of the travellers ; all country folks, who were 
packed close as pigeons in a crate in the ram- 
shackle, noisy, broken-down vehicle, which lum- 
bered on its way behind its lean and suffering 


The Waters of Edera 163 

horses through woods and hills and along moun- 
tain passes of a grandeur and a beauty on which 
the eyes of educated travellers rarely looked. 

The journey by this conveyance occupied seven 
hours, and he was obliged to wait five more at 
that village station which was the nearest point 
at which he could meet the train which went 
from Terni to Rome. Only parliamentary trains 
stop at such obscure places; and this one seemed 
to him slower even than the diligence had been. 
It was crammed with country lads going to the 
conscription levy in the capital : some of them 
drunk, some of them noisy and quarrelsome, some 
in tears, some silent and sullen, all of them sad 
company. The dusty, stinking, sun-scorched 
waggons open one to another, with the stench of 
hot unwashed flesh, and the clouds of dust driven 
through the unglazed windows seemed to Don 
Silverio a hell of man’s own making, and in re- 
membrance his empty quiet room, with its vine- 
hung window, at Ruscino seemed by comparison 
a lost haven. 

To think that there were thousands of 
men who travelled thus every day of every 
year in every country, many of them from no 
obligation whatever, but from choice ! 


164 The Waters of Edera 

“ What lunatics, what raving idiots we should 
look to Plato or to Socrates, could they see us ! ” 
he thought. Was what is called progress any- 
thing else except increased insanity in human life? 

He leaned back in his corner and bore the dust 
in his eyes and his throat as best he might, and 
spoke a few kind words to the boys nearest to 
him, and felt as if every bone in his body was 
broken as the wooden and iron cage shook him 
from side to side. The train stopped finally in 
that area of bricks and mortar and vulgarity and 
confusion where once stood the Baths of Diocle- 
tian. It was late in the night when he heard the 
name of Rome. 

No scholar can hear that name without emo- 
tion. On him it smote with a keen personal pain, 
awakening innumerable memories, calling from 
their graves innumerable dreams. 

He had left it a youth, filled with all the aspira- 
tions, the fire, the courage, the faith of a lofty 
and spiritual temper. He returned to it a man 
aged before his time, worn, weary, crushed, spir- 
itless, with no future except death. 

He descended from the waggon with the crowd 
of jaded conscripts and mingled with that com- 
mon and cosmopolitan crowd which now defiles 


The Waters of Edera 165 

the city of the Caesars. The fatigue of his body 
and the cramped pain of his aching spine added to 
the moral and the mental suffering which was 
upon him as he moved a stranger and alone along 
the new, unfamiliar streets where alone here and 
there some giant ruin, some stately arch, some 
marble form of god or prophet, recalled to him 
the Urbs that he had known. 

But he remembered the mission on which he 
came; and he rebuked his self-indulgence in 
mourning for his own broken fate. 

“ I am a faithless servant and a feeble friend,” 
he thought in self-reproach. “ Let me not 
weaken my poor remnant of strength in egotism 
and repining. I come hither for Adone and the 
Edera. Let me think of my errand only; not of 
myself, nor even of this desecrated city.” 


IX 


“ I shall not write,” Don Silverio had said to 
Adone. “ As soon as I know anything for cer- 
tain I shall return. Of that you may be sure.” 

For he knew that letters took a week or more 
to find their slow way to Ruscino, and he had 
hoped to return in less than that time ; having no 
experience of “ what hell it is in waiting to abide,” 
and of the endless doublings and goings to earth 
of that fox-like thing, a modern speculation; he 
innocently believed that he would only have to 
ask a question to have it answered. 

Day after day Adone mounted to the bell-tower 
roof and gazed over the country in vain. Day 
after day the little dog escaped from the custody 
of Nerina, trotted over the bridge, pattered up 
the street, and ran whining into his master’s 
study. Every night the people of Ruscino hung 
up a lantern on a loophole of the belfry, and 
another on the parapet of the bridge, that 
their pastor might not miss his way if he were 
166 


The Waters of Edera 167 

coming on foot beside the river; and every night 
Adone himself watched on the river bank or by 
the town wall, sleepless, longing for, yet dreading 
that which he should hear. But more than a 
week passed, and the priest did not return. The 
anxiety of Adone consumed him like fire. He 
strove to dull his anxiety by incessant work, but 
it was too acute to be soothed by physical fatigue. 
He counted the days and the hours, and he could 
not sleep. The women watched him in fear and 
silence; they dared ask nothing, lest they should 
wound him. Only Nerina whispered to him once 
or twice in the fields, “ Where is he gone? When 
will he come back? ” 

“ God knows ! ” he answered. Every evening 
that he saw the sun set beyond the purple line of 
the mountains which were heaped in their masses 
of marble and snow between him and the 
Patrimonium Petrus, he felt as if he could never 
bear another night. He could hear the clear, 
fresh sound of the running river, and it seemed 
to him like the voice of some friend crying aloud 
to him in peril. Whilst these summer days and 
nights sped away what was being done to save 
it? He felt like a coward; who stands by and 
sees a comrade murdered. In his solitude and ap- 


1 68 


The Waters of Edera 


prehension he began to lose all self-control ; he 
imagined impossible things; he began to see in 
his waking dreams, as in a nightmare, the dead 
body of Don Silverio lying with a knife in its 
breast in some cut-throat alley of Rome. For 
two weeks passed and there was no sign of his re- 
turn and no message from him. 

The poor people of Ruscino also were 
troubled. Their vicar had never left them before. 
They did not love him ; he was too unlike them ; 
but they honoured him, they believed in him; he 
was always there in their sickness and sorrow; 
they leaned on his greater strength in all their 
penury and need ; and he was poor like them, and 
stripped himself still barer for their sakes. 

Through the young friar who had replaced him 
they had heard something of the calamity which 
threatened to befall them through the Edera. It 
was all dark to them; they could understand 
nothing. Why others should want their river and 
why they should lose it, or in what manner a 
stream could be turned from its natural course — 
all these things were to them incomprehensible. 
In the beginning of the world it had been set run- 
ning there. Who would be impious enough to 
meddle with it? 


The Waters of Edera 169 

Whoever tried to do so would be smitten with 
the vengeance of Heaven. Of that they were 
sure. Nevertheless to hear the mention of such a 
thing tormented them; and when they opened 
their doors at dawn they looked out in terror lest 
the water should have been taken away in the 
night. 

Their stupidity irritated Adone so greatly that 
he ceased altogether to speak to them of the im- 
pending calamity. “ They are stocks and stones. 
They have not the sense of sheep nor the courage 
of goats,” he said, with the old scorn which his 
forefathers had felt for their rustic vassals stir- 
ring in him. 

“ I believe that they would dig sand and carry 
wood for the engineers and the craftsmen who 
would build the dykes ! ” he said to his mother. 

Clelia Alba sighed. “ My son, hunger is a hard 
master; it makes the soul faint, the heart hard, 
the belly ravenous. We have never known it. We 
cannot judge those who know nothing else.” 

“ Even hunger need not make one vile,” he an- 
swered. 

But he did not disclose all his thoughts to his 
mother. 

He was so intolerant of these poor people of 


170 The Waters of Edera 

Ruscino because he foresaw the hopelessness of 
forging their weak tempers into the metal neces- 
sary for resistance. As well might he hope to 
change a sword-rush of the river into a steel sabre 
for combat. Masaniello, Rienzi, Garibaldi, had 
roused the peasantry and led them against their 
foes; but the people they dealt with must, he 
thought, have been made of different stuff than 
these timorous villagers, who could not even be 
made to comprehend the magnitude of the wrong 
which was plotted against them. 

“ Tell them,” he said to old Trizio; “ tell them 
their wells will run dry; their fish will rot on the 
bed of what was once the river; their canes, 
their reeds and rushes, their osiers, will all fail 
them; when they shall go out into their fields 
nothing which they sow or plant will grow be- 
cause the land will be cracked and parched ; there 
will be no longer the runlets and rivulets to water 
the soil ; birds will die of thirst, and thousands of 
little river creatures will be putrid carcasses in the 
sun; for the Edera, which is life and joy and 
health to this part of the country, will be carried 
far away, imprisoned in brick walls, drawn under 
ground, forced to labour like a slave, put to vile 


The Waters of Edera 17 i 

uses, soiled and degraded. Cannot you tell them 
this, and make them see ? ” 

The old man shook his white head. “ They 
would never believe. It is too hard for them. 
Where the river runs, there it will always be. So 
they think.” 

“ They are dolts, they are mules, they are 
swine ! ” said Adone. “ Nay, may the poor beasts 
forgive me! The beasts cannot help themselves, 
but men can if they choose.” 

“ Humph! ” said Trizio doubtfully. “ My lad, 
you have not seen men shot down by the hundred. 
I have — long ago, long ago.” 

“ There is no chance of their being shot,” said 
Adone, with contempt, almost with regret. “ All 
that is wanted of them are common sense, union, 
protestation, comprehension of their rights.” 

“ Aye, you all begin with that,” said the old 
Garibaldino. “ But, my lad, you do not end there, 
for it is just those things which are your right 
which those above you will never hear of; and 
then up come the cannon thundering, and when 
the smoke clears away there are your dead — and 
that is all you get.” 

The voice of the old soldier was thin and 


172 The Waters of Edera 

cracked and feeble, but it had a sound in it which 
chilled the hot blood of his hearer. 

This was no revolutionary question, no social- 
istic theory, no new or alarming demand ; it was 
only a claim old as the hills, only a resolve to keep 
what the formation of the earth had given to this 
province. 

As well blame a father for claiming his own 
child as blame him and his neighbours for claim- 
ing their own river. 

They were tranquil and docile people, poor and 
patient, paying what they were told to pay, letting 
the fiscal wolf gnaw and glut as it chose unop- 
posed, not loving their rulers indeed, but never 
moving or speaking against them, accepting the 
snarl, the worry, the theft, the greed, the malice of 
the State without questioning. 

Were they to stand by and see their river 
ruined, and do nothing, as the helpless fishermen 
of Fuscina have accepted the ruin of their lake? 

To all young men of courage and sensibility 
and enthusiasm the vindication of a clear right 
seems an act so simple that it is only through long 
and painful experience that they realise that there 
is nothing under the sun which is so hard to com- 
pass, or which is met by such strong antagonism. 


The Waters of Edera 173 

To Adone, whose nature was unspoilt by mod- 
ern influences, and whose world was comprised in 
the fields and moors around Ruscino, it seemed 
incredible that such a title as that of his native 
soil to the water of Edera could be made clear to 
those in power without instant ratification of it. 

“ Whether you do aught or naught it comes to 
the same thing,” said the old Garibaldino who was 
wiser. “We did much; we spent our blood like 
water, and what good has it been? For one devil 
we drove out before our muskets, a thousand 
worse devils have entered since.” 

“ It is different,” said Adone, impatient. All 
we have to do is to keep out the stranger. You 
had to drive him out. No politics or doctrines 
come into our cause ; all we mean, all we want, is 
to be left alone, to remain as we are. That is all. 
It is simple and just.” 

“ Aye, it is simple; aye, it is just,” said the old 
man; but he sucked his pipe-stem grimly; he had 
never seen these arguments prosper; and in his 
own youth he had cherished such mistakes, him- 
self, to his own hindrance. 

Had he not sung in those glorious days of hope 
and faith, 


174 


The Waters of Edera 


“ Fratelli d’ltalia! 

L’ltalia s’& desta! ” 

In the night which followed on the fourteenth 
day of the Vicar’s absence, Adone, unable to rest 
or to labour, went into his cattle stalls and fed and 
watered all the animals, then he crossed the river 
and went along its north bank by the same path 
which he had followed with Don Silverio two 
weeks earlier. He had passed to and fro that path 
often since his friend’s departure, for by it the 
priest must return ; there was no other way to and 
from the west. 

Rain had fallen in the night and the river was 
buoyant, and the grass sparkled, the mountains 
were of sapphire blue, and above the shallows 
clouds of flies and gnats were fluttering, water- 
lilies were blossoming where the water was still, 
and in the marshes buffaloes pushed their dark 
forms amongst the nymphcea and the nuphur. 

He had no longer any eyes to see these things ; 
he only strained his sight to catch the first glimpse 
of a tired traveller. The landscape here was level 
for many miles of moor and pasture and a 
human form approaching could be seen from a 
great distance. It was such a dawn as he had 
used to love beyond all other blessings of nature ; 


The Waters of Edera 175 

but now the buffaloes in the pools and swamps 
were not more blind to its charm than he. 

The sun rose behind him out of the unseen 
Adrian waves, and a rosy light spread itself over 
the earth; and at that moment he saw afar off a 
dark form moving slowly. With a loud cry he 
sprang forward and ran with the fleetness of a colt 
the hundred yards which were between him and 
that familiar figure. 

“ My son ! my dear son ! ” cried Don Silverio, 
as Adone reached him and fell on his knees on 
the scorched turf. 

“ At last ! ” he murmured, choked with joy and 
fear. “ Oh, where have you been ? We are half 
dead, your people and I. What tidings do you 
bring? What comfort?” 

“ Rise up, and remember that you are a man,” 
said Don Silverio ; and the youth, gazing upwards 
keenly into his face, suddenly lost all hope, seeing 
no hope on that weary countenance. 

“ You cannot save us?” he cried, with a 
scream like a wounded hare’s. 

“ I cannot, my dear son,” answered Don Sil- 
verio. 

Adone dropped backward as if a bullet had 


176 The Waters of Edera 

struck him; his head smote the dry ground; he 
had lost consciousness, his face was livid. 

Don Silverio raised him and dragged him into 
the shade of a bay-tree and dashed water on him 
from the river. In a few minutes he was roused 
and again conscious, but on his features there was 
a dazed, stunned look. 

“ You cannot save us? ” he repeated. 

“ Neither you nor I have millions,” said Don 
Silverio with bitterness. “ It is with no other 
weapon that men can fight successfully now.” 

Adone had risen to his feet; he was pale as a 
corpse, only the blood was set in his forehead. 

“ Is it true, then ? ” he muttered. “ Do they 
mean to come here ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Who are they? Jews? ” 

“ Jews and Gentiles. There is no difference 
between those races now; they have a common 
Credo — greed; they adore one Jehovah — gold. 
My boy, I am very tired, and you are ill. Let us 
get home as quickly as we can.” 

“ I am not ill. It was nothing. It has passed. 
Tell me the worst.” 

“ The worst, in a word, is that a foreign com- 
pany, already established for several years in this 


The Waters of Edera 177 

country, has obtained faculty to turn this water 
out of its course and use it as the motive power of 
an electric railway and of an acetylene manufac- 
tory.” 

“ And this cannot be undone? ” 

“ I fear not ; they are rich and powerful. What 
are we ? Let me get home. There you shall hear 
all, and judge.” 

Adone asked and said no more. He turned and 
went backward. His steps were slow and un- 
steady, his head was hung down. The dry, hot 
air was like fire around them; the sun, though 
still low, darted fierce rays upon them like spears 
thrown with a sure aim. He had not known how 
much and how strongly he had hoped until now 
that he heard that there was no hope left. 

Don Silverio, though he did not speak of him- 
self, was faint with fatigue; the return journey 
had tried him more cruelly than the first, since 
on his way to Rome he had been sustained by the 
hope to find the project abandoned, or at the least 
uncertain. He had spent all his scanty earnings, 
so hardly and tediously collected through a score 
of years, and he had brought back to his poor 
people and to the youth he loved, nothing except 
the confirmation of their worst fears. It was 


178 The Waters of Edera 

with difficulty that he could drag his aching feet 
over the burnt grass back to his parish. 

When they reached the bridge they were on 
the village side of the stream. Adone, with an 
effort, raised himself from the trance into which 
he had fallen. 

Forgive me, sir ; you are overtired, you must 
rest. I will come to you later.” 

“ No, no,” said Don Silverio quickly, for he 
thought the youth in no state to be alone. “ I 
will wash and take a cup of coffee, then I will tell 
you all. Wait in my book-room.” 

They went together to his house. There was 
no one in the street or on the walls except some 
children gathering dandelion leaves in the ditch. 
They reached the priest’s house unobserved; only 
the little dog, who was making his diurnal search 
there, rushed out of the entrance in a frenzy of 
rapture. 

" Poor little man ! Dear Signorino ! ” mur- 
mured Don Silverio, and he took the little crea- 
ture in his arms. Then he opened the door of his 
study. “ Wait here,” he said to Adone. “ I will 
soon come downstairs. I will only wash off the 
dust of this journey.” 

Adone obeyed. 


The Waters of Edera 179 

The room was dusky, cool, silent; he sat down 
in it and waited; he could hear the loud, uneven 
beating of his own heart in the stillness. 

As he felt now, so he thought must feel men 
who have heard their own death-sentence, and 
are thrust alone into a cell. 

If Don Silverio could do nothing, to whom 
could he turn ? 

Could he induce the people to rise? It would 
be their ruin as well as his, this rape of the river. 
Would they bear it as they bore taxation, neglect, 
conscription, hunger? 

It was not half an hour, although it seemed to 
him half a day, which passed before Don Silverio 
came down the stone stair, his little dog running 
and leaping about him. He seated himself before 
Adone, by the shuttered window through which, 
by chinks and holes in the wood, there came rays 
of light and tendrils of vine. 

Then detail by detail, with lucidity and brevity, 
he narrated all he had heard and done in Rome, 
and which it was exceeding hard to bring home to 
the comprehension of a mind wholly ignorant of 
such things. 

“ When I readied Rome,” he exclaimed, “ I 
was for some days in despair. The deputy of 


180 The Waters of Edera 

San Beda was not at the Chamber. He was in 
Sicily. Another deputy, a friend of the Prior at 
San Beda, to whom I had a letter, was very ill 
with typhoid fever. I knew not where to turn. I 
could not knock at the doors of strangers without 
credentials. Then I remembered that one with 
whom I had been friends, great friends, when we 
were both seminarists, had become a great man 
at the Vaticano. It was scarcely possible that he, 
in his great elevation, would recollect one unseen 
for a quarter of a century. But I took courage 
and sent in my name. Imagine my surprise and 
emotion when I was admitted at once to his pres- 
ence, and was received by him with the uttermost 
kindness. He assisted me in every way. He 
could not of course move ostensibly in a matter 
of the government, himself, but he gave me letters 
to those who could obtain me the information and 
the interviews which I desired. He was good- 
ness itself, and through him I was even received 
by his Holiness. But from all those political and 
financial people whom I saw I learned but the 
same thing. The matter is far advanced, is be- 
yond any ’alteration. The company is formed. 
The concurrence of parliament is not to be, 
but has long been, given. The ministry favours 


The Waters of Edera 1 8 1 

the project. They all repeated to me the same 
formula : public works are to the public interest. 
They babbled commonplaces. They spoke of 
great advantages to the province. I pleaded as 
forcibly as I could in the interests of this valley, 
and I opposed fact to formula. But my facts 
were not those which they wanted; and they told 
me, politely but unmistakably, that a churchman 
should not seek to interfere with civil matters. 
The promoters are masters of the position. They 
are all of accord : the foreign bankers, the Italian 
bankers; the foreign engineers, the Italian en- 
gineers; the Technical office, the President of 
Council, the dicastro of Hygiene, of Agriculture, 
of Public Works, all of them. Our poor little 
valley seems to them a desirable prey; they have 
seized it, they will keep it. They were all cour- 
teous enough. They are polite and even unwill- 
ing to cause what they call unnecessary friction, 
But they will not give an inch. Their talons are 
in our flesh as an eagle’s in a lamb’s. One thinks 
fondly that what a man possesses is his own, be it 
land, house, stream — what not ! But we mistake. 
There is a thing stronger, higher, more powerful 
than any poor title of property acquired by herit- 
age, by purchase, or by labour. It is what they 


182 


The Waters of Edera 


call expropriation. You think the Edera cannot 
be touched: it can be expropriated. You think 
the Terra Vergine cannot be touched: it can be 
expropriated. Against expropriation no rights 
can stand. It is the concentration and crystallisa- 
tion of theft legitimatised by Government — that is 
by Force. A vagrant may not take a sheaf of 
your wheat, a fowl from your hen-house : if he do 
so, the law protects you and punishes him. A 
syndicate of rich men, of powerful men, may take 
the whole of your land, and the State will compel 
you to accept any arbitrary price which it may 
choose to put upon your loss. According as you 
are rich or poor yourself, so great or so small will 
be the amount awarded to you. All the sub- 
prefects, all the syndics, all the officials in this 
province, will be richly rewarded; the people de- 
frauded of the soil will get what may be given 
them by an enforced valuation. I have conversed 
with all kinds and conditions of men ; and I have 
heard only one statement in the mouths of all ; the 
matter is beyond all alteration. There is money 
in it ; the men whose trade is money will not let it 
go. My son, my dearest son, be calm, be prudent. 
Violence can only injure yourself, and it can save 
nothing.” 


The Waters of Edera 183 

He had for the moment spoken as he had been 
speaking for the last two weeks to men of educa- 
tion and of the world. 

He was recalled to the fact that his present 
auditor did not reason, did not comprehend, only 
felt, and was drunk with his own force of feeling. 
The look on Adone’s face appalled him. 

The youth seemed almost to have no intelli- 
gence left, almost as if all which had been said to 
him had reached neither his ear or his brain. 

Don Silverio had been in the world of men, and 
unconsciously he had adopted their phraseology 
and their manner. To Adone, who had expected 
some miracle, some rescue almost archangelic, 
some promise of immediate and divine interposi- 
tion, these calm and rational statements conveyed 
scarcely any sense, so terrible was the destruction 
of his hopes. All the trust and candour and 
sweetness of his nature turned to gall. 

He listened, a sullen, savage darkness stealing 
over his countenance. 

“ And our rights? Theirs? — mine?” he said 
as Don Silverio paused. 

“ For all rights taken away they will give legal 
compensation.” 

“ You dare repeat that, sir? ” 


184 The Waters of Edera 

Don Silverio controlled his indignation with 
difficulty. 

“ I dare do whatever I deem right to do. You 
should know that by this time.” 

“You think this right?” 

“ I think it right to repeat exactly what has 
been said to me. I do not of necessity approve 
because I repeat.” 

“ You know no compensation is possible! ” 

“ Morally, none. I speak of but what law al- 
lows.” 

“ The law of pirates, of cut-throats ! ” 

“ The law of pirates, of cut-throats ! ” 

Adone laughed. His hearer had heard such 
laughter as that in madhouses. 

“ The State kills a soldier, and gives his fam- 
ily a hundred francs! That is the compensation 
of the State. If they emptied their treasuries, 
could they give the soldier back his life? If they 
emptied their treasuries, could they give us back 
what they will take from us? ” 

“ My dear son, do not doubt my sympathy. All 
my heart is with you. But what can be done? 
Can a poor village, a poor commune, struggle 
with any chance of success against a rich com- 
pany and a government? Can a stalk of wheat 


^The Waters of Edera 185 

resist the sickle? Can an ear of wheat resist the 
threshing-flail ? I have told you the story of Don 
Quixote della Mancha. Would you fight the 
empty air like him ? ” 

Adone did not reply. 

His beautiful face grew moody, dark, fierce ; in 
his eyes flamed passions which had no voice upon 
his lips; his white teeth ground against one 
another. 

“ Believe me, Adone,” said his friend, “ we are 
in evil days when men babble of liberty, and are 
so intent on the mere empty sound of their lips, 
that they perceive not the fetters on their wrists 
and feet. There was never any time when there 
was so little freedom and so little justice as in 
ours. Two gigantic dominions now rule the hu- 
man race; they are the armies and the money- 
makers. Science serves them turn by turn, and 
receives from each ies wage. The historian 
Mommsen has written that we are probably in- 
ferior both in intelligence and in humanity, in 
prosperity and in civilization, at the close of this 
century to what the human race was under 
Severus Antoninus; and it is true.” 

Adone did not seem to hear. What were these 


1 86 


The Waters of Edera 


abstract reasonings to him ? All he cared for were 
his river and his fields. 

“ I sought for an old friend of mine in Rome,” 
said Don Silverio, endeavouring to gain his atten- 
tion and divert his thoughts, “one Pamfilio Scoria. 
He was a learned scholar; he had possessed a small 
competence and a house of his own, small too, but 
of admirable architecture, a Quattro-centisto 
house. I could not find this house in Rome. After 
long search I learned that it had been pulled 
down to make a new street. Pamfilio Scoria had 
in vain tried to preserve his rights. The city had 
turned him out and taken his property, paying 
what it chose. His grief was so great to see it 
destroyed, and to be turned adrift with his book 
and manuscripts, that he fell ill and died not long 
afterwards. On the site of the house there is a 
drinking-place kept by Germans; a street railway 
runs before it. This kind of theft, of pillage, 
takes place every week. It is masked as public 
utility. We are not alone sufferers from such a 
crime.” 

Adone was still silent. 

His thoughts were not such as he could utter 
aloud in the priest’s presence ; and he heard noth- 
ing that was said; he heard only little Nerina’s 


The Waters of Edera 187 

voice saying : “ Could we not kill these men ? ” 
That flutelike whisper seemed to him to sigh with 
the very voice of the river itself. 

Don Silverio rose, his patience, great as it was, 
exhausted. 

“ My son, as you do not give ear to me, it is 
useless for me to speak. I must go to my office. 
The Prior from San Beda desires to return this 
evening. I have done all I can. I have told you 
the facts as they stand. Take courage. Be peace- 
able for your mother’s sake and restrain yourself 
for your own. It is a frightful calamity which 
hangs over us all. But it is our duty to meet it 
like men.” 

Like men ! ” muttered Adone as he rose to his 
feet; had not the child from the Abruzzi rocks a 
better sense of man’s duty than this priest so 
calm and wise? 

“ Men resist,” he said very low. 

“ Men resist,” repeated Don Silverio. “ They 
resist when their resistance serves any purpose, 
but when it can only serve to crush them uselessly 
under a mass of iron they are not men if they re- 
sist, but madmen.” 

“ Farewell, sir,” said Adone. 


1 88 The Waters of Edera 

And with an obeisance he went out of the 
chamber. 

“ Poor boy ! Poor, passionate, dear youth ! ” 
thought Don Silverio as the door closed. u He 
thinks me cold and without emotion; how little 
he knows ! He cannot suffer as I suffer for him 
and for my poor wretched people. What will 
they do when they shall know? They will mourn 
like starved sheep bleating in a field of stones, 
and I, their shepherd, shall not have a blade of 
grass wherewith to comfort them ! ” 


X 


Adone's sight was troubled as soon as he 
passed out of the dusky room into the blaze of 
noonday sunshine. His eyes seemed filled with 
blood. His brain was dizzy. That which had been 
his sheet-anchor in all doubts and contrition, his 
faith in and his reverence for Don Silverio availed 
him nothing now. A blind sympathy with his 
most violent instincts was the only thing which 
could now content or console him. 

He was in that state to which all counsels of 
moderation appear but so much treason and un- 
kindness. As he went out of the priest’s house 
in that dazzling light, a hand caught his sleeve 
and that young flutelike voice of which he had 
thought murmured to him — 

“ Adone ! what tidings ? What has he told 
you?” 

Nerina, having run across the bridge and up 
the street after the little dog, had seen him and 
Don Silverio enter, and had waited for Adone to 
come out of the house. Adone pushed her away. 

189 


190 The Waters of Edera 

“ Let me be ! ” he said impatiently. “ It is all 
bad — bad — bad. Bad as ill-blood. Bad as crime.” 

She clung to his arm nevertheless. 

“ Come into the church and tell me. No one 
cares as I do.” 

“ Poor little soul ! ” 

He let her draw him into the great porch of the 
church and thence into the church itself; it was 
dark as it always was, cold as an autumn evening, 
damp even in the canicular heat. 

“ No one will hear; tell me! ” said the child. 

He told her. 

“ And what are you to do ? ” she asked, her 
eyes dilated with horror. 

According to him,” said Adone bitterly, “ I 
am to be meek and helpless as the heifer which 
goes to the slaughter. Men must not resist what 
the law permits.” 

Nerina was mute. To dispute what Don Sil- 
verio said was like blasphemy to her, she hon- 
oured him with all her soul, but she loved Adone. 

She loved the Edera water too; that fair green 
rippling water on whose bank she had sat naked 
under the dock leaves the day the two rams 
had fought. That which was threatened was an 


The Waters of Edera 191 

unholy, wicked, cruel robbery. Was it indeed 
necessary to yield to it in submission? 

She remembered a saying of Baruffo’s : “ If a 
man stand up to me I leave him some coins in 
his pocket, some life in his body ; but if he crouch 
and cringe I stick him in the throat. He is a 
craven.” 

The doctrine of Baruffa seemed to her the 
more sound. It warmed the blood of the little 
Abruzzi-born maiden to recall it. In the high 
mountains and forests the meeker virtues are not 
greatly honoured. 

She stood by Adone’s side, knitting her brows 
under her auburn curling locks, clinching her 
hands. 

“ Is there one who does this evil most of all ? ” 
said said at length. " One we could reach ? ” 

“ You are a brave child, Nerina! ” said Adone, 
and his words made her proud. “ I fear there is 
a crowd. Such men are like locusts ; they come in 
swarms. But the first man who touches the 
water ” 

“ Shall sup of it and drown.” 

The little girl added the words with a fierce joy 
in her great bright eyes. 

“ Hush ! ” said Adone, “ and get you home- 


192 The Waters of Edera 

ward, and tell my mother that Don Silverio has 
returned, and that I will come back to my work 
in a little while. Tell her he says there is no 
hope.” 

Nerina obeyed him instantly, her bare feet fly- 
ing over the stones of the street. He was left 
alone in the sombre church with the great winged 
angels of stone above his head. 

He was grateful for its gloom. He shrank 
from the light of the morning. Every drop of 
blood in his body, and in his brain, and in his 
limbs, seemed to him to turn to fire — a fire which 
all the waters of the Edera would never quench. 

How could they be accused of rebellion or 
wrong-doing because they wanted to keep the 
water running in the channel which it had made 
for itself in the very beginning of the world ? 

The Edera was ancient as its neighbors, the 
Fiumicino which heard the voice of Caesar; or the 
Marechia bridged by Augustus; ancient as the 
fountain of Arethusa, as the lake of Diana Nem- 
orensis. What sacrilege could be more heinous 
than to chase it from its chosen course? No 
Lucumon of Etruria or Esarch of Ravenna or 
Pope of Rome had ever dared to touch it. The 


The Waters of Edera 


J 93 


revolutionists ! they, who only sought to preserve 
it. The revolutionists were those who with alien 
hands and vampire’s greed would seek to disturb 
its peace. 


XII 


It was now the season to plough the reapen 
fields, and he had always taken pleasure in his 
straight furrows — as straight as though meas- 
ured by a rule on the level lands ; and of the skill 
with which on the hilly ground Orlando and Ri- 
naldo moved so skilfully, turning in so small a 
space, answering to every inflection of his voice, 
taking such care not to break a twig of the fruit 
trees, or bend a shoot of the vines, or graze a stem 
of the olives. 

“ Good hearts, dear hearts, faithful friends and 
trusty servants ! ” he murmured to the oxen. He 
leaned his bare arms on the great fawn-col- 
oured flanks of Orlando, and his forehead on his 
arms, which grew wet with hidden tears. 

The cattle stood motionless, breathing loudly 
through their distended nostrils, the yokes on 
their shoulders crinking, their hides twitching 
under the torment of the flies. Nerina, who had 
been washing linen in the Edera, approached 
through the olives; she hesitated a few minutes, 


194 


The Waters of Edera 195 

then put the linen down off her head on to the 
grass, gathered some plumes of featherfew and 
ferns, and brushed the flies off the necks of the 
oxen. Adone started, looked up in displeasure at 
being thus surprised, then, seeing the intruder 
was only the little girl, he sat down on the side of 
the plow, and made believe to break his noon-day 
bread. 

“ You have no wine,” said the child, shall I 
run to the house for a flask? ” 

“ No, my dear, no. If I am athirst there is 
water — as yet there is water ! ” he murmured 
bitterly, for the menace of this impending horror 
began to grow on him with the fixity and obses- 
sion of a mania. 

Nerina continued to fan the cattle and drive off 
the flies from their necks. She looked at him 
wistfully from behind the figures of the stately 
animals. She was afraid of the sorrow which 
was in the air. No one had told her what the evil 
was which hung over the Terra Vergine; and she 
never asked questions. The two elder women 
never took her into their confidence on any sub- 
ject, and she had no communication with the few 
people in Ruscino. She had seen that something 
was wrong, but she could not guess what : 


196 The Waters of Edera 

something which made Madonna Clelia’s brows 
dark, and Gianna’s temper bad, and Adone himself 
weary and ill at ease. 

Seeing him sitting there not eating, throwing 
his bread to some wild pigeons which followed the 
plough, she plucked up courage to speak; he was 
always kind to her, though he noticed her little. 

“ What is it that ails you all ? ” she asked. 
“ Tell me, Adone, I am not a foolish thing to 
babble.” 

He did not answer. What use were words: 
It was deeds which were wanted. 

“ Adone, tell me,” she said entreatingly. 
“ What is this that seems to lie like a stone on you 
all? Tell me why Don Silverio has gone away. 
I will never tell again.” 

There was a pathetic entreaty in the words 
which touched and roused him; there was in it 
the sympathy which would not criticise or doubt, 
and which is to the sore heart as balm and soothes 
it by its very lack of reason. 

He told her; told her the little that he knew, 
the much that he feared ; he spent all the force of 
his emotion in the narrative. 

The child leaned against the great form of the 


The Waters of Edera 197 

ox, and listened, not interrupting by a word or 
cry. 

She did not rebuke him as Don Silverio had 
done, or reproach him as did his mother ; she only 
listened with a world of comprehension in her 
eyes more eloquent than speech, not attempting 
to arrest the fury of imprecation or the prophecies 
of vengeance which poured from his lips. Hers 
was that undoubting, undivided, implicit faith 
which is so dear to the wounded pride and im- 
potent strength of a man in trouble who is con- 
scious that what he longs to do would not be ap- 
proved by law or sanctioned by religion. That 
faith spoke in her eyes, in her absorbed attention, 
in the few breathless sentences which escaped her ; 
there was also on her youthful face a set, stern 
anger akin to his own. 

“ Could we not slay these men ? ” she said in a 
low, firm voice; she came of a mountain race of 
the Abruzzi, by whom life was esteemed little and 
revenge honour. 

“ We must not even say such a thing,” said 
Adone bitterly, in whose ears the rebuke of Don 
Silverio still rang. “ In these days everything is 
denied us, even speech. If we take our rights we 
are caged in their prisons.” 


198 The Waters of Edera 

“ But what will you do, then ? ” 

“ For the moment I wait to learn more. These 
things are done in the dark, or at least in no light 
that we can see. To kill these men as you wish, 
little one, would do nothing. Others of their kind 
would fill their places. The seekers of gold are 
like ants. Slay thousands, tens of thousands 
come on ; if once the scent of gain be on the wind 
it brings men in crowds from all parts as the 
smell of carrion brings meat-flies. If they think 
of seizing the Edera it is because men of business 
will turn it into gold. The Edera gives us our 
grain, our fruits, our health, our life, but if it will 
give money to the foreigner the foreigner will 
take it as he would take the stars and coin them 
if he could. The brigand of the hills is caged or 
shot; the brigand of the banks is allowed to fatten 
and die in the odour of success. There are two 
measures.” 

Norina failed to understand, but her mind was 
busy with what seemed to her this monstrous in- 
justice. 

“ But why do they let them do it ? They take 
and chain the men who rob a traveller or a house.” 

Adone cast his last atom of bread to the birds. 

“ There are two measures,” he answered. 


The Waters of Edera 199 

“ Kill one, you go to the galleys for life. Kill 
half a million, you are a hero in history, and you 
get in your own generation titles, and money, and 
applause.” 

“ Baruffo was a good man and my father’s 
friend,” Nerina said, following her own 
thoughts. “ Baruffo was in the oak woods al- 
ways, high above us, but he often brought us wine 
and game at night, and sometimes money too. 
Baruffo was a good man. He was so kind. 
Twice my father aided him to escape. But one 
night they seized him ; there was a whole troop of 
carabineers against him, they took him in a trap, 
they could never have got him else, and I saw him 
brought down the mountain road and I ran and 
kissed him before they could stop me; and he 
never came back — they kept him.” 

“ No doubt they kept him,” said Adone bit- 
terely. “ Baruffo was a peasant outlawed ; if he 
had been a banker, or a minister, or a railway 
contractor, he might have gone on thieving all 
his life, and met only praise. They keep poor 
Baruffo safe in their accursed prisons, but they 
will take care never to keep, or take even for a 
day, law-breakers whose sins are far blacker than 
his, and whose victims are multitudes.” 


200 The Waters of Edera 

“ If Baruffo were here he would help you,” said 
Nerina. “ He was such a fine strong man and 
had no fear.” 

Adone rose and put his hands on the handles of 
the plough. 

“ Take up your linen, little one,” he said to the 
girl, “ and go home, or my mother will be angry 
with you for wasting time.” 

Nerina came close to him and her brown dog- 
like eyes looked up like a dog’s into his face. 

“ Tell me what you do, Adone,” she said be- 
seechingly, “ I will tell no one. I was very little 
when Baruffo came and went to and fro in our 
hut ; but I had sense ; I never spoke. Only when 
the guards had him I kissed him because then it 
did not matter what they knew; there was no 
hope. 

“ Yes, I will tell you,” said Adone. “ Maybe 
I shall end like Baruffo.” 

Then he called on Orlando and Rinaldo by 
their names, and they lowered their heads and 
strained at their collars, and with a mighty 
wrench of their loins and shoulders they forced 
the share through the heavy earth. 

Nerina stood still and looked after him as he 
passed along under the vine-hung trees. 


The Waters of Edera 


201 


“ Baruffo may have done some wrong,” she 
thought, “ but Adone, he has done none, he is as 
good as if he were a saint of God, and if he should 
be obliged to do evil it will be no fault of his, but 
because other men are wicked.” 

Then she put the load of linen on her head, and 
went along the grassy path homeward, and she 
saw the rosy gladioli and the golden tansy by 
which she passed through tears. Yet she was 
glad because Adone had trusted her; and be- 
cause she now knew as much as the elder women 
in his house who had put no confidence in her. 


XIII 


All that day the people of Ruscino crowded 
round the Presbytery. 

“ What of the Edera water, sir ? ” they asked 
him a hundred times in the shrill cries of the 
women, in the rude bellow of the men, in the 
high-pitched, dissonant clamour of angry speak- 
ers. And all the day his patience and kindness 
were abused and his nerves racked and strained 
in the effort to persuade them that the river which 
ran beneath their walls was no more theirs than 
the stars which shone above it. 

It was hopeless to bring home to their intelli- 
gence either the invalidity of their claim, or the 
peril which would lie in their opposition. 

“ ’Twas there in the beginning of time,” they 
said, “ There it must be for our children’s chil- 
dren.” 

He talked nonsense, they thought; who should 
be able to stop a river which was for ever run- 
ning ? The Edera water was carried in the womb 


202 


The Waters of Edera 203 

of the Leonessa; Leonessa gave it fresh birth 
every day. 

Yes! thought Don Silverio as he walked by the 
river after sunset and watched its bright, impetu- 
ous current dash under the stones and shingle 
whilst two kingfishers flashed along its surface. 
Yes, truly Nature would pour it forth every day 
from her unfailing breast so long as man did not 
do it outrage. But how long would that be? 
A year, two years, three years, at most; then its 
place would know it no more, and its song would 
be silent. The water-pipet would make its nest 
no more in its sedges, and the blue porphyrion 
would woo his mate no more on its bosom. As 
one of the rich men in Rome had said to him with 
a cynical smile, “ The river will be there always, 
only it will be dry ! ” 

In the gloaming he went and spoke to Adone’s 
mother. She was at her spinning-wheel, but her 
hands moved mechanically; her face was dark 
and her eyelids swollen. 

“ My friend/' he said, as he sat down on the 
bench beneath the rose-tree, “ I have brought you 
ill-tidings.” 

“ It is true then, sir ? ” 

“Alas!” 


204 


The Waters of Edera 


“ I do not believe it. God will not let it be. 

“ Would that I could think so.” 

“ Tis you, sir, who should think so, and not I.” 

“ Madame Clelia,” he said, with some impati- 
ence, “ it is no use to dream dreams. Try and 
persuade your son to accept the inevitable. My 
words seem harsh. They are not so. But I dare 
not let you cherish your illusions like this; blind 
yourself to fact, you expect some supernatural in- 
tercession. They will take your river; they will 
take your lands. Your house will be yours no 
more. If you do not go peaceably they will have 
you turned out, as if you were a debtor. This 
may take some time for it will be done with all 
due legal forms, but it will be done. They will 
pay you and your son some value by appraisement, 
but they will take your land and your house and 
all that is yours and his ; I have seen the plans in 
Rome. Can you think that I should invent this 
to torture you? There will be a process, a sen- 
tence, an award; the money the law allots to you 
will be strictly paid to you ; but you will be driven 
away from the Terra Vergine. Realise this. 
Try and keep your reason and save your son from 
madness. Surely, where there is great love be- 
tween two people, and bonds of memory and mu- 


The Waters of Edera 205 

tual duty, and strong faith, there a home may be 
made anywhere, even over seas ? ” 

Clelia Alba snapped with violence the thread 
she span. “ They have talked you over, sir,” she 
said curtly. “ When you went away you were 
with us.” 

“ With you! ” he echoed. “ In heart, in pity, 
in sympathy, yes; never could I be otherwise. 
But were I to see you struck with lightning, 
should I save you by telling you that lightning 
did not kill? I did not know that the enterprise 
was as mature as I found it to be when I saw the 
promoters of it in Rome. But I know now that 
it has been long in incubation ; you must remem- 
ber that every bend and runlet of the water are 
marked on the ordnance maps; every stream, 
however small, is known to the technical office, 
and the engineers civil and military. I abhor the 
project. It is to me a desecration, an infamy, a 
robbery; it will ruin the Vald’edera from every 
point of view; but we can do nothing; this is 
what I implore you to realise. We are as help- 
less as one of your fowls when you cut its throat. 
Violence can only hurry your son into the grip of 
the law. His rights are morally as plain as yon- 
der snow on those mountains; but, because they 


206 


The Waters of Edera 


will buy his rights at what will be publicly esti- 
mated at a fair price, the law will not allow him 
to consider himself injured. My dear friend, you 
are a woman of sense and foresight ; try to see this 
thing as it is.” 

“ I will hear what Adone says, sir,” replied 
Clelia Alba doggedly. “ If he bids me burn the 
house, I shall burn it.” 

Don Silverio was heart-sick and impatient. 
What use was it to argue with such minds as 
these ? As well might he waste his words on the 
trunks of the olives, on the oxen in their stalls. 

They were wronged. 

That the wrong done them was masked under 
specious pretences and was protected by all the 
plate armour of law and government, made the 
outrage little the worse to them. The brigand 
from the hills who used to harry their cattle and 
pillage their strong-box looked to them a hero, a 
saint, a Christ, compared to these modern thieves 
who were environed with all the defences and 
impunity which the law and the State could give. 
When an earth-shock makes the soil under your 
feet quiver, and gape, and mutter, you feel that 
unnatural forces are being hurled against you, you 


The Waters of Edera 207 

feel that you are the mere sport and jest of an 
unjust deity. This was what they felt now. 

“ Nay,” said Clelia Alba, “ if the earth opened, 
and took us, it would be kinder ; it would bury us 
at least under our own rooftree.” 

What use was it to speak to such people as 
these of the right of expropriation granted by par- 
liament, of the authority of a dicastero, and of a 
prefecture, of the sophistries and arguments of 
lawyers, of the adjudication of values, of the 
appraisement of claims ? They were wronged : 
and they came of a race and of a soil in which the 
only fitting redresser of wrong was revenge. 

“ Mother,” cried Adone, “ my father would 
not have given up his land as meekly as a sheep 
yields up her life.” 

“ No,” said Clelia Alba ; “ whether he came 
from those war-lords of old I know not, but he 
would have fought as they fought.” 


XIII 


The autumn and winter passed without more 
being heard in the Vald’edera of the new invasion. 
The peasantry generally believed that such silence 
was favourable to their wishes; but Don Silverio 
knew that it was otherwise. The promoters of 
the work did not concern themselves with the local 
population, they dealt with greater folks; with 
those who administered the various communes, 
and who controlled the valuation of the land 
through which the course of the Edera ran; 
chiefly those well-born persons who constituted 
the provincial council. A great deal of money 
would change hands, but it was intended, by all 
through whose fingers those heavy sums would 
pass, that as little of the money as possible should 
find its way to the owners of the soil. A public 
work is like a fat hog; between the slaughterers, 
the salesmen, the middlemen, and the consumers, 
little falls to the original holder of the hog. The 
peasants of the Vald’edera were astonished that 
none came to treat with them; but they did not 
208 


The Waters of Edera 209 

understand that they dwelt under a paternal gov- 
ernment, and the first care of a paternal govern- 
ment is to do everything for its children which 
is likely to promise any profit itself. 

The men of business whom Don Silverio had 
seen in Rome did not trouble themselves with the 
rustic proprietors of either water or land; they 
treated with the great officials of the department, 
with the deputies, the prefects, and sub-prefects, 
the syndics and assessors; so a perfect silence on 
the question reigned from the rise of the river to 
its mouth, and many of the men said over their 
wood-fires that they had been scared for nothing. 
The younger men, however, and those who were 
under A done’s influence, were more wary; they 
guessed that the matter was being matured with- 
out them; that when the hog should be bacon, 
should be cut up and cured, and eaten, the small- 
est and rustiest flitch would then be divided 
amongst them. Agents, such agents as were 
ministerial instruments of these magnates in elec- 
tion time, went amongst the scattered people and 
spoke to them of the great public utility of the 
contemplated works, and made them dispirited 
and doubtful of the value of their holdings, and 
uncertain of the legality of their tenures. But 


210 


The Waters of Edera 


these agents were cautious and chary of promises, 
for they knew that in this district the temper of 
men was proud and hot and revengeful ; and they 
knew also that when these rural owners should 
be brought into the courts to receive their price, 
they would be dealt with just as the great men 
chose. One by one, so that each should be unsup- 
ported by his neighbors, the men of the valley 
were summoned, now to this town, now to the 
other, and were deftly argued with, and told that 
what was projected would be their salvation, and 
assured that the delegates who would be sent in 
their name by their provincial council to the capi- 
tal would defend all their dearest interests. 

The rich man, the man of business, the man of 
cities may receive in such transactions compensa- 
tion, which is greatly to their advantage, because 
traffic in their trade, because to buy and sell, and 
turn and re-turn, and roll the ball of gold so that 
it grows bigger every hour, is their custom and in- 
terest. But the poor man, the rustic, the man 
with the one ewe lamb, loses always, whether he 
assents to the sale or has it forced upon him. 
These people of the valley might have a little 
ready money given them on valuation, but it 
would be money clipped and cropped by the 


The Waters of Edera 


21 I 


avarice of intermediates until little of it would 
remain and they would be driven out to begin life 
anew ; away from their old rooftree and the fruits 
of long years of labour. 

From far and near men came to Ruscino to take 
counsel of its vicar; his wisdom being esteemed 
and his intelligence known in the valley beyond 
the confines of his parish ; and what advice could 
he give them ? He could but tell them that it was 
useless to kick against the pricks. He knew so 
well the cold, curt, inflexible official answer; the 
empty, vapouring regrets, false, simpering, Phari- 
saical; the parrot-phrases of public interests, public 
considerations, public welfare ; the smile, the sneer, 
the self-complacent shrug of those whose bribe is 
safely pocketed and who know that only the peo- 
ple whom they profess to serve will suffer. To 
him as to them it seemed a monstrous thing to 
take away the water from its natural channel and 
force the men who lived on it and by it to alter all 
their ways of life and see their birthplace changed 
into a desert in order that aliens might make 
money. But he could not counsel them to resist ; 
no resistance was possible. It was like any other 
tyranny of the State; like the fiscal brutality 
which sold up a poor man's hayrick or clothing 


212 The Waters of Edera 

because he could not pay the poll-tax. If the poor 
man resisted, if he fired his old fowling-piece, or 
used his knife on the minions of the State, what 
use was such resistance? He went to rot in pri- 
son. 

His calling, his conscience, his good sense, his 
obedience to law, all alike compelled him to urge 
on them patience, submission, and inaction before 
the provocation of a great wrong. He dared not 
even let them see one tithe of the sympathy he 
felt, lest if he did so they should draw from it an 
incentive to illegal action. 

The part which he was obliged to take in thus 
persuading the people to be tranquil under in- 
justice estranged him farther and farther from 
Adone Alba, who found it a cowardice and a 
treachery, although he dared not say so in words. 
Had he retained the coolness of reason the youth 
would have known and acknowledged that in the 
position of Don Silverio no other course would 
have been possible or decent. But reason had 
long left him, and inaction and impulse alone re- 
mained. He would not allow that a wrong might 
be condemned, and yet endured. To him all en- 
durance had in it the manners of condonation. 

He ceased to have any faith in his friend and 


The Waters of Edera 213 

teacher; and gradually grew more and more 
alienated from him ; their intimate affection, their 
frequent intercourse, their long walks and even- 
ing meetings were over ; and even as his spiritual 
director the vicar had no longer power over him. 
Most of his actions and intentions were concealed ; 
except in the younger men of the district who saw 
as he saw he had now no confidence in any one. 
The impending loss of the land and the water 
turned all the sweetness of his nature to gall. He 
thought that never in the history of the world had 
any wrong so black been done. He, himself, 
flung broadcast the fires of burning incitation 
without heeding or caring whither* the flames 
might reach. Riots had been successful before 
this ; why not now ? He was young enough and 
innocent enough to believe in the divine right of a 
just cause. If that were denied, what remained 
to the weak? 

If he could, he would have set the valley in 
flames from one end to the other rather than have 
allowed the foreigners to seize it. Had not his 
forefathers perished in fire on yonder hill rather 
than cede to the Borgia? 

Evening after evening he looked at the sun set- 


The Waters of Edera 


214 

ting behind the Rocca and felt the black rage in 
him gnaw at his heart like a vulture. 

They would offer him money for this dear 
earth, for this fair, beloved stream ! — the mere 
thought choked him as a man who loved his wife 
would be choked at the thought of her dis- 
honoured sale. 

Some were half persuaded that it would be a 
fine thing to get some crisp banknotes in exchange 
for waste ground which yielded little, or a cabin 
which was falling to pieces, or a strip of woodland 
which gave them fuel, but not much more. But 
the majority were angry, irreconcilable, furious to 
lose the water, full of their wrongs. These were 
glad to find in Adone Alba a spokesman and a 
leader; they were tow which caught fire at his 
torch. They comprehended little, but they knew 
that they were wronged; and they agreed with 
him that the labourers who should come from over 
the border to meddle with them should be made 
to rue it bitterly. 

The Italian goes over seas, indeed; huddled 
under the hatches of emigrant ships; miserable, 
starved, confined; unable to move, scarce able to 
breathe, like the unhappy beasts carried with him. 
But he never goes willingly; he never wrenches 


The Waters of Edera 215 

himself from the soil without torn nerves and ach- 
ing heart ;if he live and make a little money in exile 
he comes back to the shadow of the village church, 
to the sound of the village bell, which he knew 
in his boyhood, to walk in the lanes where he 
threw his wooden quoit as a lad, and to play domi- 
noes under the green bough of the winehouse 
where as a child he used to watch his elders and 
envy them. 

Most of these people dwelling on the Edera 
water had not been five miles away from the river 
in all their lives. The moorland birds and beasts 
were farther afield than they. They had no in- 
terest in what was beyond their own freehold; 
they did not even know or care whither the water 
went, or whence it came. Where it was, they 
owned it. That was enough for them. 

“ Sir, what is it Adone does ? ” said Clelia Alba, 
one dusky and stormy eve after vespers. “ At 
nightfall out he goes; and never a word to me, 
only ‘ Your blessing, mother/ he says, as if he 
might lose his life where he goes. I thought at 
first it was some love matter, for he is young ; but 
it cannot be that, for he is too serious, and he goes 
fully armed, with his father’s pistols in his belt 
and his own long dagger in his stocking. True, 


2l6 


The Waters of Edera 


they go so to a love tryst, if it be a dangerous 
one ; if the woman be wedded ; only I think it is 
not that, for men in love are different. I think 
that he broods over some act.” 

“ Neither you nor I can do aught. He is of 
age to judge for himself,” said Don Silverio; 
“ but, like you, I do not think a woman is the 
cause of his absence.” 

“ Can you not speak to him, sir ? ” 

“ I have spoken. It is useless. He is moved 
by a motive stronger than any argument we can 
use. In a word, good Clelia, this coming seizure 
of the water is suffering so great to him that he 
loses his reason. He is trying to make the men 
of the commune see as he sees. He wants to 
rouse them to arm them. He might as well set 
the calves in your stalls to butt the mountain 
granite.” 

“Maybe, sir,” said Clelia Alba, unwillingly; 
but her eyes gleaned, and her stern, proud face 
grew harder. “ But he has the right to do it if he 
can. If they touch the water they are thieves, 
worse than those who came down from the hills 
in the years of my girlhood.” 

“ You would encourage him in insurrection, 
Then?” 


The Waters of Edera 217 

“ Nay, I would not do that; but neither would 
I blame him. Every man has a right to defend 
his own. Neither his father nor mine, sir, were 
cowards.” 

“ This is no question of cowardice. It is a 
question of common sense. A few country lads 
cannot oppose a government. With what 
weapons can they do so? Courage I honour; 
without it all active virtues are supine; but it is 
not courage to attempt the impossible, to lead the 
ignorant to death — or worse.” 

“ Of that my son must judge, sir," said Adone’s 
mother, inflexible to argument. “ I shall not set 
myself against him. He is master now. If he 
bids me fire the place I shall do it. For four-and- 
twenty years he has obeyed me like a little child ; 
never a murmur, never a frown. Now he is his 
own master, and master of the land. I shall do 
as he tells me. It is his turn now, and he is no 
fool, sir, Adone.” 

“ He is no fool ; no. But he is beside himself. 
He is incapable of judgment. His blood is on 
fire and fires his brain." 

“ I think not, sir. He is quiet. He speaks 
little ” 

“ Because he meditates what will not bear 


2l8 


The Waters of Edera 


speech. Were he violent I should be less alarmed. 
He shuns me — me — his oldest friend.” 

“ Because no doubt, sir, he feels you are against 
him.” 

“ Against him ! How can I, being what I am, 
be otherwise? Could you expect me to foment 
insurrection, and what less than that can opposi- 
tion such as he intends become ? ” 

“ You speak as you feel bound to speak, sir, 
no doubt.” 

“ But think of the end ? Must not every action 
be weighed and considered and judgment passed 
on it by what will be its issue? No rising of our 
poor people can effect anything except their own 
destruction. It is only a demagogue who would 
urge them on to it. Adone is not a demagogue. 
He is a generous youth frantic from sorrow, but 
helpless. Can you not see that?” 

“I do not see that he is helpless,” said his 
mother with obstinacy. “ The thing they are 
about to do us is unjust. I would load a gun my- 
self against them, and if money be what is wanted 
I would give Adone my pearls. He asks me for 
nothing, but when he does I will strip myself to 
my shift to aid him.” 

“ It is a terrible madness ! ” cried Don Silverio. 


The Waters of Edera 219 

“ What can your fowling-piece or your necklace 
do against all the force these speculators and con- 
tractors will employ? It is a great, a heinous, 
wrong which will be done to you ; that no one can 
feel more strongly than I. But there are wrongs 
to which we must submit when we are weak ; and, 
my good Clelia, against this we pooor folks in 
the Vale of Edera are as weak as the teal in the 
marshes against the swivel guns of the sports- 
men’s punts.” 

But he argued in vain ; logic and persuasion are 
alike useless when opposed to the rock of ignor- 
ance and obstinacy. She held him in deep rever- 
ence; she brought her conscience to his judgment; 
she thought him beyond ordinary humanity; but 
when he endeavoured to persuade her that her son 
was wrong he failed. 

“ Sir, you know that this crime against the river 
will ruin us,” she said doggedly. “ Why then 
should you try to tie our hands ? I do not know 
what Adone does; his mind is hid from me, but 
if, as you say, he wants a rising of our people, it 
is natural and just.” 

When the mind of the peasant — man or 
woman — be made up in its stubborness, all learn- 
ing, wisdom, experience, even fact speaks in vain ; 


220 


The Waters of Edera 


it opposes to all proofs the passive resistance of a 
dogged incredulity ; to reason with it is as useless 
as to quarry stone with a razor. 

Many and many a time had he given up in ex- 
haustion, and nausea his endeavours to convince 
the rural mind of some simple fact, some clear 
cause, some elementary principle. He knew that 
Clelia Alba would never believe in the exile which 
would be her certain fate until the armed and 
liveried creatures of the State should drive her 
from her home by order of the State. He had 
seen in Rome that there was no possible chance 
of opposing this enterprise against the Edera 
water. It had been decided on by men of money 
who had the ear of ministers, the precedence in 
ante-chambers, the means of success in political 
departments and in commercial centres. A few 
scattered provincial owners of land and labourers 
on land might as well try to oppose these men as 
the meek steinbok in the mountain solitudes to 
escape the expanding bullet of a prince’s rifle. 
Yet he also saw how impossible it was to expect 
a young man like Adone, with his lineage, his 
temperament, his courage, and his mingling of 
ignorance and knowledge, to accept the inevitable 


The Waters o f Edera 


221 


without combat. As well might he be bidden to 
accept dishonour. 

The remorse in his soul was keen, inasmuch as 
without him Adone would never have known of 
his descent from the lords of Ruscino, and never, 
probably, have acquired that “ little” learning 
which a poet of the north has said is a dangerous 
thing. 

“ Better,” thought Don Silverio, with torment- 
ing self-reproach, “ better have left him to his 
plough, to his scythe, to his reaping-hook; better 
have left him in ignorance of the meaning of art 
and of study; better have left him a mere peasant 
to beget peasants like himself. Then he would 
have suffered less, and might possibly have taken 
peaceably such compensation as the law would 
have allowed him for the loss to his land, and 
have gone away to the West, as so many go, 
leaving the soil they were born on to pass out of 
culture.” 

Would Adone ever have done that? No; he 
would not; he was wedded to the soil like the 
heaths that grew out of it. He might be violently 
dragged away, but he would never live elsewhere ; 
his heart had struck its roots too deeeply into the 
earth which nurtured him. 


222 The Waters of Edera 

“ Why did you tell him of all the great men 
that lived? ” Clelia Alba had often said to him. 
“ Why did you fill his soul with that hunger which 
no bread that is baked can content? We, who 
work to live, have no time to do aught except 
work, and sleep awhile to get strength for more 
work; and so on, always the same, until age ties 
knots in our sinews, and makes our blood thin 
and slow. What use is it to open gates to him 
which he must never pass, to make his mind a 
tangled skein that can never be undone? When 
you work hard you want to rest in your resting 
hours, not to dream. Dreaming is no rest. He 
is always dreaming, and now he dreams of blood 
and fire. ,, 

His heart was with them, and by all the obli- 
gations of his calling was forced to be against 
them. He was of a militant temper; he would 
gladly have led them into action as did the mar- 
tial priests of old ; but his sense, his duty, his con- 
science, all forbade him to even show them such 
encouragement as would lie in sympathy. Had 
he been rich he would have taken their cause into 
the tribunals and contested this measure inch by 
inch, however hopelessly. But who would plead 
for a poor parish, for a penniless priest? What 


The Waters of Edera 


223 

payment could he offer, he who could scarcely 
find the coins to fill his salt-box or to mend his 
surplice? 

A great anxiety consumed him. He saw no 
way out of this calamity. The people were 
wronged, grossly wronged, but how could they 
right that wrong ? Bloodshed would not alter it, 
or even cure it. What was theirs, and the earth’s, 
was to be taken from them; and how were they 
to be persuaded that to defend their own would 
be a crime ? 

“ There is nothing, then, but for the people to 
lie down and let the artillery roll over them ! ” 
said Adone once, with bitter emphasis. 

“ And the drivers and the gunners are their 
own brothers, sons, nephews, who will not check 
their gallop an instant for that fact ; for the worst 
thing about force is that it makes its human in- 
struments mere machines like the guns which they 
manoeuvre,” thought Don Silverio, as he an- 
swered aloud : “ No ; I fear there will be nothing 

else for them to do under any tyranny, until all 
the nations of the earth shall cease to send their 
children to be made the janissaries of the State. 
No alteration of existing dominions will be pos- 
sible so long as the Armies exist.” 


The Waters of Edera 


224 

Adone was silent; convinced against his will, 
and therefore convinced without effect or ad- 
hesion. 

He dared not tell his friend of the passionate 
propaganda which he had begun up and down the 
course of the Edera, striving to make these stocks 
and stones stir, striving to make the blind see, the 
deaf hear, the infirm rise and leap. 

“ Let us go and make music,” said the priest at 
last. “ That will not harm any one, and will do 
our own souls good. It is long since I heard your 
voice.” 

“ It will be longer,” thought Adone, as he an- 
swered : “ Excuse me, sir ; I cannot think of any 

other thing than this great evil which hangs over 
us. There is not one of our country people who 
does not curse the scheme. They are frightened 
and stupid, but they are angry and miserable. 
Those who are their spokesmen, or who ought to 
be, do not say what they wish, do not care what 
they wish, do not ask what they wish. They are 
the sons of the soil, but they count for nothing. 
If they met to try and do anything for themselves, 
guards — soldiery — would come from a distance, 
they say, and break up the meetings, and carry 
those who should speak away to some prison. 


The Waters of Edera 225 

The Government approves the theft of the water ; 
that is to be enough.” 

“ Yet public meeting has been a right of the 
people on the Latin soil ever since the Caesars.” 

“ What matter right, what matter wrong? No 
one heeds either.” 

“ What can be done then ? ” 

“ We must help ourselves.” 

He spoke sullenly and under his breath. He 
did not dare to say more clearly what was in his 
thoughts. 

“ By brute force? ” said Don Silverio. “ That 
were madness. What would be the number of 
the able-bodied men of all three communes ? Let 
us say two thousand; that is over the mark. 
What weapons would they have? Old muskets, 
old fowling-pieces, and not many of those; their 
scythes, their axes, their sticks. A single bat- 
talion would cut them down as you mow grass. 
You have not seen rioters dispersed by trained 
troops. I have. I have seen even twenty cara- 
bineers gallop down a street full of armed citizens, 
the carabineers shooting right and left without 
selection; and the street, before they had ridden 
two hundred yards, was empty except for a few 
fallen bodies which the horses trampled. You 


226 


The Waters of Edera 


can never hope to succeed in these days with a 
mere jacquerie. You might as well set your 
wheat-sheaves up to oppose a field battery/’ 

“ Garibaldi,” muttered Adone, “ he had naught 
but raw levies ! ” 

“ Garibaldi was an instinctive military genius, 
like Aguto, like Ferruccio, like Gian delle Bande 
Neri, like all the great Condottieri. But he 
would probably have rotted in the Spielberg, or 
been shot in some fortress of the Quadrilateral, if 
he had not been supported by that proclamation of 
Genoa and campaign of Lombardy, which were 
Louis Napoleon’s supreme error in French 
policy.” 

Adone was silent, stung by that sense of dis- 
comfiture and mortification which comes upon 
those who feel their own inability to carry on an 
argument. To him Garibaldi was superhuman, 
fabulous, far away in the mists of an heroic past, 
as Ulysses to Greek youths. 

“ You, sir, may preach patience,” he said sull- 
enly. “ It is no doubt your duty to preach it. 
But I cannot be patient. My heart would choke 
in my throat.” 

Don Silverio looked him straight in the face. 

“ What is it you intend to do? ” 


The Waters of Edera 22 7 

“ I shall do what I may, what I can.” 

“ I tell you that you can do nothing, my son.” 

“ How know you that, reverend? You are a 
priest, not a man.” 

A faint red colour came over Don Silverio’s 
colourless face. 

“ One may be both,” he said simply. “ You 
are distraught, my son, by a great calamity. Try 
and see yourself as others see you, and do not lead 
the poor and ignorant into peril. Will the Edera 
waters be freer because your neighbours and you 
are at the galleys? The men of gold who have 
the men of steel behind them will be always 
stronger than you.” 

“ God is over us all,” said Adone. 

Don Silverio was silent. He could not refute 
that expression of faith, but in his soul he could 
not share it ; and Adone had said it, less in faith, 
than in obstinacy. He meant to rouse the coun- 
try if he could, let come what might of the rising. 

Who could tell the isssue? A spark from a 
poor man’s hearth had set a city in flames before 
now. 

“How can you think me indifferent?” said 
Don Silverio. “ Had I no feeling for you should 
I not feel for myself? Almost certainly my life 


228 


The Waters of Edera 


will be doomed to end here. Think you that I 
shall see with callousness the ruin of this fair 
landscape, which has been my chief consolation 
through so many dreary years? You, who deem 
yourself so wholly without hope, may find solace 
if you choose to take it. You are young, you are 
free, all the tenderest ties of life can be yours if 
you choose; if this home be destroyed you may 
make another where you will. But I am bound 
here. I must obey; I must submit. I cannot 
move ; I cannot alter or renew my fate ; and to me 
the destruction of the beauty of the Edera valley 
will be the loss of the only pleasure of my exist- 
ence. Try and see with my eyes, Adone; it may 
help you to bear your burden/’ 

But he might as well have spoken to the water 
itself, or to the boulders of its rocks, or to the 
winds which swept its surface. 

“ It is not yours,” said Adone, almost brutally. 
“You were not born here. You cannot know! 
Live elsewhere? My mother and I? Sooner a 
thousand times would we drown in Edera ! ” 

The water was golden under the reflections of 
the sun as he spoke; the great net was swaying 
in it, clear of the sword rush and iris; a king- 
fisher like a jewel was threading its shallows, blue 


The Waters of Edera 229 

as the veronica; there was the fresh smell of the 
heather and the wild roses on the air. “ You do 
not know what it is to love a thing ! — how 
should you ? — you, a priest ! ” said Adone. 

Don Silverio did not reply. He went on down 
the course of the stream. 

One morning in early April Adone received a 
private invitation to attend in five days’ time at 
the Muncipality of San Beda to hear of something 
which concerned him. It was brought by the lit- 
tle old postman who went the rounds of the dis- 
trict once a week on his donkey ; the five days had 
already expired before the summons was de- 
livered. Adone’s ruddy cheeks grew pale as he 
glanced over it ; he thrust it into the soil and drove 
his spade through it. The old man, waiting in 
hopes to get a draught of wine, looked at him in 
dismay. 

“ Is that a way to treat their Honours’ com- 
mands ? ” he said aghast. 

Adone did not answer or raise his head; he 
went on with his digging; he was turning and 
trenching the soil to plant potatoes; he flung 
spadefuls of earth over the buried summons. 


230 The Waters of Edera 

“What’s amiss with you, lad?” said the old 
fellow, who had known him from his infancy. 

“ Leave me,” said Adone, with impatience. 

“ Go to the house if you want to drink, and to bait 
your beast.” 

“ Thank ye,” said the old man. “ But you will 
go, won’t you, Adone? It fares ill with those 
who do not go.” 

“ Who told you to say that? ” 

“ Nobody ; but I have lived a many years, and 
I have carried those printed papers a many years, 
and I know that those who do not go when they 
are called rue it. Their Honours don’t let you 
flout them.” 

“ Their Honours be damned ! ” said Adone. 
“ Go to the house.” 

The little old man, sorely frightened, dropped 
his head, and pulling his donkey by its bridle went 
away along the grass path under the vines. 

Adone went on delving, but his strong hands 
shook with rage and emotion as they grasped the 
handle of the spade. He knew as well as if he 
had been told by a hundred people that he was 
called to treat of the sale of the Terra Vergine. 
He forced himself to go on with his forenoon’s 


The Waters of Edera 231 

labour, but the dear familiar earth swam and spun 
before his sight. 

“ What ? ” he muttered to it, “ I who love you 
am not your owner ? I who was born on you am 
not your lawful heir? I who have labored on 
you ever since I was old enough to use a tool at 
all am now in my manhood to give you up to 
strangers? I will make you run red with blood 
first ! ” 

It wanted then two hours of noon. When 
twelve strokes sounded from across the river, 
tolled slowly by the old bronze bell of the church 
tower, he went for the noonday meal and rest to 
the house. 

The old man was no longer there, but Clelia 
Alba said to him : 

“ Dario says they summon you to San Beda, 
and that you will not go ? ” 

“ He said right.” 

“ But, my son,” cried his mother, “ go you 
must! These orders are not to be shirked. 
Those who give them have the law behind them. 
You know that.” 

“ They have the villainy of the law behind 
them ; the only portion of the law the people are 
ever suffered to see.” 


232 The Waters of Edera 

“ But how can you know what it is about if you 
do not go? ” 

“ There is only one thing which it can be. One 
thing that I will not hear.” 

“ You mean for the river — for the land? ” 

“ What else? ” 

Her face grew as stern as his own. “ If that 
be so ... Still you should go, my son; 
you should go to hold your own.” 

“ I will hold my own,” said Adone ; and in his 
thoughts he added, “ but not by words.” 

“ What is the day of the month for which they 
call you ? ” asked his mother. 

“ The date is passed by three days. That is a 
little jest which authority often plays upon the 
people.” 

They went within. The meal was eaten in 
silence; the nut-brown eyes of Nerina looked wist- 
fully in their faces, but she asked nothing; she 
guessed enough. 

Adone said nothing to Don Silverio of the sum- 
mons, for he knew that the priest would counsel 
strongly his attendance in person at San Beda, 
even although the date was already passed. 

But Don Silverio had heard of it from the post- 
man, who confided to him the fears he felt that 


The Waters of Edera 233 

Adone would neglect the summons, and so get 
into trouble. He saw at once the error which 
would be committed if any sentence should be 
allowed to go by default through absence of the 
person cited to appear. By such absence the ab- 
sentee discredits himself ; whatsoever may be the 
justice of his cause, it is prejudiced at the outset. 
But how to persuade of this truth a man so blind 
with pain and rage and so dogged in self-will as 
Adone had become, Don Silverio did not see. He 
shrank from renewing useless struggles and dis- 
putes which led to no issue. He felt that Adone 
and he would only drift farther and farther apart 
with every word they spoke. 

The young man saw this thing through a red 
mist of hatred and headstrong fury; it was im- 
possible for his elder to admit that such views 
were wise or pardonable, or due to anything more 
than the heated visions evoked by a great wrong. 

That evening at sunset he saw the little girl 
Nerina at the river. She had led two cows to the 
water, and they and she were standing knee deep 
in the stream. The western light shone on their 
soft, mottled, dun hides and on her ruddy brown 
hair and bright young face. The bearded bul- 
rushes were round them ; the light played on the 


234 The Waters of Edera 

broad leaves of the docks, and the red spikes of 
great beds of willow-herb ; the water reflected the 
glowing sky, and close to its surface numbers of 
newly-come swallows whirled and dipped and 
darted, chasing gnats, whilst near at hand on a 
spray a little woodlark sang. 

The scene was fair, peaceful, full of placid and 
tender loveliness. 

“ And all this is to be changed and ruined in 
order that some sons of the mammon of unrighte- 
ousness may set up their mills to grind their gold,” 
he thought to himself as he passed over the step- 
ping-stones which at this shallow place could be 
crossed dryfoot. 

“ Where is Adone? ” he called to the child. 

“ He is gone down the river in the punt, most 
Reverend.” 

“ And his mother? ” 

“ Is at the house, sir.” 

Don Silverio went through the pastures under 
the great olives. When he reached the path lead- 
ing to the house he saw Clelia Alba seated before 
the doorway spinning. The rose-tree displayed 
its first crimson buds above her head; under the 
eaves the swallows were busy. 


The Waters of Edera 235 

Clelia Alba rose and dropped a low courtesy to 
him, then resumed her work at the wheel. 

“ You have heard, sir? ” she said in a low tone. 
“ They summon him to San Beda.” 

“ Old Dario told me; but Adone will not go? ” 

“ No, sir; he will never go. ,, 

“ He is in error.” 

“ I do not know, sir. He is best judge of 
that.” 

“ I fear he is in no state of mind to judge 
calmly of anything. His absence will go against 
him. Instead of an amicable settlement the ques- 
tion will go to the trubunals, and if he be unrepre- 
sented there, he will be condemned in contuma- 
ciam” 

“Amicable settlement?” repeated his mother, 
her fine face animated and stern, and her deep, 
dark eyes flashing. “ Can you, sir, dare you, sir, 
name such a thing ? What they would do is rob- 
bery, vile robbery, a thousand times worse than 
aught the men of night ever did when they came 
down from the hills to harass our homesteads.” 

“ I do not say otherwise ; but the law is with 
those who harass you now. We cannot alter the 
times, good Clelia, we must take them as they are. 
Your son should go to San Beda and urge his 


236 The Waters of Edera 

rights, not with violence but with firmness and 
lucidity; he should also provide himself with an 
advocate, or he will be driven out of his home by 
sheer force, and with some miserable sum as com- 
pensation.” 

Clelia Alba’s brown skin grew ashen grey, and 
its heavy lines deepened. 

“You mean . . . that is possible?” 

“ It is more than possible. It is certain. These 
things always end so. My poor dear friend! do 
you not understand, even yet, that nothing can 
save your homestead? ” 

Clelia Alba leaned her elbows on her knees and 
bowed her face upon her hands. She felt as 
women of her race had felt on some fair morn 
when they had seen the skies redden with baleful 
fires, and the glitter of steel corslets shine under 
the foliage, and had heard the ripe corn crackle 
under the horses’ hoofs, and had heard the shriek- 
ing children scream, “ The lances are coming, 
mother ! Mother ! save us ! ” 

Those women had had no power to save home- 
stead or child; they had seen the pikes twist in 
the curling locks, and the daggerrs thrust in the 
white young throats, and the flames soar to 
heaven, burning rooftree and clearing stackyard, 


The Waters of Edera 


2 37 

and they had possessed no power to stay the steel 
or quench the torch. She was like them. 

She lifted her face up to the light. 

“He will kill them.” 

“ He may kill one man — two men — he will have 
blood on his hands. What will that serve? I 
have told you again and again. This thing is in- 
evitable — frightful, but inevitable, like war. In 
war do not millions of innocent and helpless 
creatures suffer through no fault of their own, 
no cause of their own, on account of some king’s 
caprice or statesman’s blunder? You are just 
such victims here. Nothing will preserve to you 
the Terra Vergine. * My dear old friend, have 
courage.” 

“I cannot believe it, sir; I cannot credit it. 
The land is ours; this little bit of the good and 
solid earth is ours ; God will not let us be robbed 
of it.” 

“ My friend ! no miracles are wrought now. I 
have told you again and again and again you must 
lose this place.” 

“I will not believe it ! ” 

“ Alas ! I pray that you may not be forced to 
believe; but I know that I pray in vain. Tell me, 


238 The Waters of Edera 

you are certain that Adone will not answer that 
summons ? ” 

“ I am certain.” 

“ He is mad.” 

“ No, sir, he is not mad. No more than I, his 
mother. We have faith in heaven.” 

Don Silverio was silent. It was not for him 
to tell them that such faith was a feeeble staff. 

“ I must not tarry, he said, and rose. “ The 
night is near at hand. Tell your son what I have 
said. My dear friend, I would almost as soon 
stab you in the throat as say these things to you ; 
but as you value your boy’s sanity and safety 
make him realise this fact, which you and he deny : 
the law will take your home from you, as it will 
take the river from the province.” 

“ No, sir ! ” said Clelia Alba fiercely. “ No, no, 
no ! There is a God above us ! ” 

Don Silverio bade her sadly farewell, and in- 
sisted no more. He went through the odorous 
grasslands where the primrose and wild hyacinth 
grew so thickly and the olive branches were al- 
ready laden with purpling berries, and his soul 
was uneasy, seeing how closed is the mind of the 
peasant to argument or to persuasion. Often had 
he seen a poor beetle pushing its ball of dirt up 


The Waters of Edera 239 

the side of a sandhill only to fall back and begin 
again and again full; for truth to endeavour to 
penetrate the brain of the rustic is as hard as for 
the beetle to climb the sand. He was disinclined 
to seek the discomfiture of another useless argu- 
ment, but neither could he be content in his con- 
science to let this matter wholly alone. 

Long and dreary as the journey was to San 
Beda, he undertook it again, saying nothing to 
any one of his purpose. He hoped to be able be- 
fore the syndic to put Adone’s contumacy in a 
pardonable light, and perhaps to plead his cause 
better than the boy could plead it for himself. To 
Don Silverio he always seemed a boy still, and 
therefore excusable in all his violences and ex- 
travagances. 

The day was fine and cool, and walking was 
easier and less exhausting than it had been at the 
season of his first visit; moreover, his journey to 
Rome had braced his nerves and sinews to exer- 
tion, and restored to him the energy and self- 
possession which the long, tedious, monotonous 
years of solitude in Ruscino had weakened. 
There was a buoyant wind coming from the sea 
with rain in its track, and a deep blue sky with 
grand clouds drifting past the ultramarine hues of 


240 


The Waters of Edera 


the Abruzzi range. The bare brown rocks grew 
dark as bronze, and the forest-clothed hills were 
almost black in the shadows as the clustered 
towers and roofs of the little city came in sight. 
He went, fatigued as he was, straight to the old 
episcopal palace, which was now used as the 
municipality, without even shaking the dust off 
his feet. 

“ Say that I come for the affair of Adone 
Alba,” he said to the first persons he saw in the 
ante-room on the first floor. In the little ecclesi- 
astical town his calling commanded respect. 
They begged him to sit down and rest, and in a 
few minutes returned to say that the most illustri- 
ous the Count Corradini would receive him at 
once in his private room ; it was a day of general 
council, but the council would not meeet for an 
hour. The syndic was a tall, spare, frail man 
with a patrician’s face and an affable manner. 
He expressed himself in courteous terms as flat- 
tered by the visit of the Vicar of Ruscino, and 
inquired if in any way he could be of the slightest 
service. 

“ Of the very greatest, your Excellency,” said 
Don Silverio. “ I have ventured to come hither 
on behalf of a young parishioner of mine, Adone 


The Waters of Edera 241 

Alba, who, having received the summons of your 
Excellency only yesterday, may, I trust, be ex- 
cused for not having obeyed it on the date named. 
He is unable to come to-day. May I offer my- 
self for his substitute as amicus curiae f ” 

“ Certainly, certainly,” said Corradini, relieved 
to meet an educated man instead of the boor he 
had expected. “ If the summons were delayed 
by any fault of my officials, the delay must be in- 
quired into. Meanwhile, most reverend, have 
you instructions to conclude the affair?” 

“ As yet, I venture to remind your Excellency, 
we do not even know what is the affair of which 
you speak.” 

“ Oh no ; quite true. The matter is the sale of 
the land known under the title of the Terra 
Vergine.” 

“ Thank Heaven I am here, and not Adone,” 
thought Don Silverio. 

Aloud he answered, “ What sale ? The pro- 
prietor has heard of none.” 

“ He must have heard. It can be no news to 
you that the works about to be made upon the 
river Edera will necessitate the purchase of the 
land known as the Terra Vergine.” 

Here the syndic put on gold spectacles, drew 


The Waters of Edera 


242 

towards him a black portfolio filled by plans and 
papers, and began to move them about, mut- 
tering, as he searched, little scraps of phrases out 
of each of them. At last he turned over the 
sheets which concerned the land of the Alba. 

“ Terra Vergine — Commune of Ruscino — 
owners Alba from 1620 — family of good report 
— regular taxpayers — sixty hectares — land pro- 
ductive; value — just so — humph, humph, 
humph!” 

Then he laid down the documents and looked 
at Don Silverio from over his spectacles. 

“ I conclude, most reverend, that you come 
empowered by this young man to treat with us? ” 

“ I venture, sir,” replied Don Silverio respect- 
fully, “ to remind you again that it is impossible 
I should be so empowered, since Adone Alba was 
ignorant of the reason for which he was sum- 
moned here.” 

Corradini shuffled his documents nervously 
with some irritataion. 

“ This conference, then, is mere waste of time? 
I hold council to-day ” 

“ Pardon me, your Excellency,” said Don 
Silverio blandly. “ It will not be waste of time 
if you will allow me to lay before you certain 


The Waters of Edera 243 

facts, and, first, to ask you one question: Who 
is, or are, the buyer or buyers of this land ? ” 

The question was evidently unwelcome to the 
syndic; it was direct, which every Italian con- 
siders ill-bred, and it was awkward to answer. 
He was troubled for personal reasons, and the 
calm and searching gaze of the priest’s dark eyes 
embarrassed him. After all, he thought, it would 
have been better to deal with the boor himself. 

‘‘Why do you ask that?” he said irritably. 
“ You are aware that the National Society for the 
Improvement of Land and the foreign company 
of the Teramo-Tronto Electric Railway combine 
in these projected works? ” 

“To which of these two societies, then, is 
Adone Alba, or am I, as his locum tencns, to 
address ourselves ? ” 

“ To neither. This commune deals with you.” 

“ Why?” 

Count Corradini took off his glasses, put them 
on again,, shifted the papers and plans in his im- 
posing portfolio. 

“ May I ask again — why ? ” said Don Silverio 
in the gentlest tones of his beautiful voice. 

“Because, because,” answered the syndic irri- 
tably, “ because the whole affair is in treaty be- 


244 The Waters of Edera 

tween our delegates and the companies. Public 
societies do not deal with private individuals di- 
rectly, but by proxy.” 

“ Pardon my ignorance,” said Don Silverio, 
“ but why does the commune desire to substitute 
itself for the owner ? ” 

“ It is usual.” 

“Ah! It is usual.” 

Corradini did not like the repetition of his 
phrase, which would not perhaps bear very close 
examination. He looked at his watch. 

“ Excuse me, Reverend Father, but time 
presses.” 

“ Allow me to crave of your bounty a little 
more time, nevertheless. I am not habituated to 
business, but I believe, if I understand your wor- 
shipful self aright, the commune contemplates 
purchasing from the individuals with power and 
intent to sell to the companies. 

What an unmannerly ecclesiastic, thought Cor- 
radini ; for indeed, put thus bluntly and crudely, 
what the commune, as represented by himself, was 
doing did not look as entirely correct as could be 
desired. 

“ I was in Rome, most illustrious,” said Don 


The Waters of Edera 


245 

Silverio, “ in connection with this matter some 
months ago.” 

“ In Rome?” 

To hear this was unpleasant to the syndic; it 
had never occurred to him that his rural, illiterate, 
and sparsely populated district would have con- 
tained any person educated enough to think of in- 
quiring in Rome about this local matter. 

“ To Rome! Why did you go to Rome? ” 

“To acquire information concerning this 
scheme.” 

“ You are an owner of land? ” 

“ No sir. I am a poor, very poor, priest.” 

“ It cannot concern you, then.” 

“ It concerns my people. Nothing which con- 
cerns them is alien to me.” 

“ Humph, humph ! Most proper, most praise- 
worthy. But we have no time for generalities. 
You came to treat of the Terra Vergine? ” 

“Pardon me, sir ; I came to hear why you sum- 
moned Adone Alba, one of my flock.” 

•“ Could he not have come himself ? It had 
been but his duty.” 

“ He could not, sir ; a»d, to say truth, he would 
not. He does not intend to sell his land.” 

“ What!” 


246 The Waters of Edera 

Corradini half rose from his chair, leaning both 
hands on the table, and staring through his glasses 
across the mass of portfolios and papers at the 
priest. 

“ He will have no choice allowed him,” he said 
with great anger. “ To the interests of the State 
all minor interests must bend. What! a mere 
peasant stand in the way of a great enterprise? ” 

“You intend expropriation then?” 

The voice of Don Silverio was very calm and 
sweet, but his countenance was stern. 

Corradini was irritated beyond measure. He 
did not desire to play that great card so early in 
the game. 

“ I do not say that,” he muttered. “ There 
must be parliamentary sanction for any forced 
sale. I spoke in general terms. Private interest 
must cede to public.” 

“ There is parliamentary sanction already given 
to the project for the Valley of Edera,” said Don 
Silverio, “ expropriation included.” 

Count Corradini threw himself back in his 
chair with an action expressive at once of wrath 
and of impotence. He had an irritating sense 
that this priest was master of the position, and 
knew much more than he said. In reality Don 


The Waters of Edera 247 

Silverio knew very little, but he had skill and tact 
enough to give a contrary impression to his audi- 
tor. He followed up his advantage. 

“ Expropriation is to be permitted to enforce 
sales on recalcitrant landowners,” he continued. 
“ But that measure, even though conceded in 
theory, will take time to translate into practice. I 
fear, sir, that if it be ever put into execution we 
shall have trouble in your commune. Your coun- 
cil has been over hasty in allying itself with these 
speculators. You and they have not taken into 
account the immense injury which will be done to 
the valley and to my own village or town, call it 
as you will, of Ruscino. The people are quiet, 
patient, meek, but they will not be so if they are 
robbed of the water of the Edera. It is the 
source of all the little — the very little — good 
which comes to them. So it is with Adone Alba. 
He has been God-fearing, law-abiding, a good son, 
excellent in all relations; but he will not recog- 
nize as law the seizure of his land. Sir, you are 
the elected chief of this district; all these people 
look to you for support in their emergency. 
What are these foreign speculators to you that 
you should side with them? You say this com- 
mune will purchase from its peasant proprietors 


248 The Waters of Edera 

in the interests of these foreigners. Was it to 
do this that they elected you? Why should the 
interests of the foreigners be upheld by you to 
the injury of those of your own people? Speak- 
ing for my own parish, I can affirm to you that, 
simple souls as they are, poor in the extreme, and 
resigned to poverty, you will have trouble with 
them all if you take it on you to enforce the 
usurpation of the Edera water.” 

Count Corradini, still leaning back in his large 
leathern chair, listened as if he were hypnotised; 
he was astounded, offended, enraged, but he was 
fascinated by the low, rich, harmonious modula- 
tions of the voice which addressed him, and by 
the sense of mastery which the priest conveyed 
without by a single word asserting it. 

“ You would threaten me with public dis- 
order?” he said feebly, and with consciousness 
of feebleness. 

“ No, sir; I would adjure you, in God’s name, 
not to provoke it.” 

“It does not rest with me.” 

He raised himself in his chair; his slender, 
aristocratic hands played nervously with the 
strings of the portfolio, his eyelids flickered, and 
his eyes avoided those of his visitor. 


The Waters of Edera 249 

“ I have no voice in this matter. You mis- 
take.” 

“ Surely your Excellency speaks with the voice 
of all your electors ? ” 

“ Of my administrative council, then ? But 
they are all in favour of the project; so is his Ex- 
cellency the Prefect, so is the Deputy, so is the 
Government. Can I take upon myself in my own 
slender personality to oppose these ? ” 

“ Yes, sir, because you are the mouthpiece of 
those who cannot speak for themselves.” 

“ Euh ! Euh ! That may be true in a sense. 
But you mistake; my authority is most limited. 
I have but two votes in Council. I am as wholly 
convinced as you can be that some will suffer for 
the general good. The individual is crushed by 
the crowd in these days. We are in a period of 
immense and febrile development; of wholly un- 
foreseen expansion; we are surrounded by mira- 
cles of science; we are witnesses of an in- 
crease of intelligence which will lead to results 
whereof no living man can dream; civilisation in 
its vast and ineffable benevolence sometimes 
wounds, even as the light and heat of the blessed 
sun — ” 

“ Pardon me, sir,” said Don Silverio, “ at any 


The Waters of Edera 


250 

other moment it would be my dearest privilege 
to listen to your eloquence. But time passes. I 
came here on a practical errand. I desire to take 
back some definite answer to Adone and Clelia 
Alba. Am I to understand from you that the 
municipality, on behalf of these foreign com- 
panies, desires to purchase his land, and even in- 
sists upon its right to do so ? ” 

The syndic accustomed to seek shelter from all 
plain speaking in the cover of flowery periods 
such as these in which he had been arrested, was 
driven from his usual refuge. He could not re- 
sume the noble and enlightened discourse which 
had been thus recklessly cut in two. He tied the 
strings of the portfolio into a bow, and undid 
them, and tied them again. 

“ I have received you, sir, ex officio,” he re- 
plied after a long silence. “You address me as if 
I possessed some special individual power. I have 
none. I am but the mouthpiece, the representa- 
tive of my administrative council. You, a learned 
ecclesiastic, cannot want to be taught what are 
the functions of a syndic.” 

“ I am to understand then that I must address 
myself on behalf of my people to the Prefect? ” 

Corradini was silent. The last thing he desired 


The Waters of Edera 251 

was for this importunate priest to see the Pre- 
fect. 

“ I must go into council at once,” he said, again 
looking at his watch. “ Could you return ? Are 
you remaining here? ” 

“ Some hours, sir.” 

“ Will you dine with me at my house at three? 
You will give me much pleasure, and the Countess 
Corradini will be charmed.” 

“ I am grateful for so much offered honour, but 
I have promised to make my noonday meal with 
an old friend, the superior of the Cistercians.” 

“ An excellent, a holy person,” said Corradini, 
with a bend of his head. “ Be at my house, rev- 
erend sir, at five of the clock. I shall then have 
spoken with the assessors of your errand, and it 
will be dealt with probably in council.” 

Don Silverio made a low bow, and left him 
free to go to his awaiting councillors, who were 
already gathered round a long table covered by 
green cloth, in a vaulted and stately chamber, with 
frescoes losing their colour on its walls, and sto- 
ries from Greek mythology carved on its oaken 
doors and stone cornices. 

“ Pray excuse me, gentlemen,” said the courtly 
mayor to his assessors, taking his seat on an old 


252 The Waters of Edera 

walnut-wood throne at the head of the table. “ I 
have been detained by this matter of the Val d’ 
Edera. I fear the people of that valley will show 
an ungrateful and refractory temper. How hard 
it is to persuade the ignorant where their true 
interests lie ! But let us to business.” 

“ It will be a hard matter,” said the Prior to 
Don Silverio as they walked together in the little 
burial-ground of the monastery between its lines 
of rose-trees and its lines of crosses, after the 
frugal noonday meal had been eaten in the refrec- 
tory. “ It will be a hard matter. You will fail, 
I fear. The municipalities here smell money. 
That is enough to make them welcome the inva- 
sion. What can you do against the force of 
gold?” 

“ Would it avail anything to see the Prefect? ” 
“ Nothing. He is cousin to the Minister of 
Agriculture, whose brother is chairman of the Te- 
ramo-Tronto Company. We are governed solely 
by what the French call tripotage .” 

“ What character does this syndic bear? ” 

“ A good one. He is blameless in his domestic 
relations, an indulgent landlord, a gentleman, re- 
spectful of religion, assiduous in his duties; but 
he is in debt; his large estates produce little; he 


The Waters of Edera 253 

has no other means. I would not take upon me 
to say that he would be above a bribe/’ 

At five of the clock, as the Syndic had told him 
to do, Don Silverio presented himself at the Pa- 
lazzo Corradini. He was shown with much def- 
erence by an old liveried servant into a fine apart- 
ment with marble busts, in niches in the walls 
and antique bookcases of oak, and door-hangings 
of Tuscan tapestry. The air of the place was cold, 
and had the scent of a tomb. It was barely illu- 
mined by two bronze lamps in which unshaded oil 
wicks burned. Corradini joined him there in five 
minutes’ time, and welcomed him to the house 
with grace and warmth of courtesy. 

“ What does he want of me? ” thought Don 
Silverio, who had not been often met in life by 
such sweet phrases. “ Does he want me to be 
blind? ” 

“ Dear and reverend sir,” said the mayor, plac- 
ing himself with his back to the brass lamps, “ tell 
me fully about this youth whom you protect, who 
will not sell the Terra Vergine. Here we can 
speak at our ease; yonder at the municipality, 
there may be always some eavesdropper.” 

“ Most worshipful, what I said is matter well 
known to the whole countryside; all the valley 


The Waters of Edera 


25 4 

can bear witness to its truth,” replied Don Sil- 
verio, and he proceeded to set forth all that he 
knew of Adone and Clelia Alba, and of their great 
love for their lands ; he only did not mention what 
he believed to be Adone’s descent, because he 
feared that it might sound fantastical, or pre- 
sumptuous. Nearly three hundred years of peas- 
ant ownership and residence were surely titles 
enough for consideration. 

“ If land owned thus, and tilled thus by one 
family, can be taken away from that family by 
Act of Parliament to please the greedy schemes 
of strangers, why preserve the eighth command- 
ment in the Decalogue ? It becomes absurd. 
There cannot be a more absolute ownership than 
this of the Alba to the farm they live on and cul- 
tivate. So long as there is any distinction at all 
between meum et tnum, how can its violent seizure 
be by any possibility defended ? ” 

“ There need be no violent seizure,” said Cor- 
radini. “ The young man will be offered a good 
price ; even, since you are interested in him, a high 
price.” 

“ But he will take no price — no price if he were 
paid millions; they would not compensate him 
for his loss.” 


The Waters of Edera 


255 


“ He must be a very singular young man.” 

“ His character is singular, no doubt, in an age 
in which money is esteemed the sole goal of ex- 
istence, and discontent constitutes philosophy. 
Adone Alba wants nothing but what he has; he 
only asks to be left alone.” 

“ It is difficult to be left alone in a world full of 
other people! If your hero want a Thebaid he 
can go and buy one in La Plata or the Argentine 
with the price we shall give for his land.” 

“ We? ” repeated Don Silverio with significant 
emphasis. 

Corradini reddened a little. “ I use the word 
because I am greatly interested in the success of 
this enterprise, being convinced of its general util- 
ity to the province. Being cognisant as I am of 
the neighbourhood, I hoped I could prevent some 
friction.” 

“ The shares are, I believe, already on the mar- 
ket?” 

It was a harmless remark, yet it was a disa- 
greeable one to the Syndic of San Beda. 

“ What would be the selling price of the Terra 
Vergine,” he said abruptly? “It is valued at 
twelve thousand francs.” 

“ It is useless to discuss its price,” replied Don 


256 The Waters of Edera 

‘ Silverio, “ and the question is much wider than 
the limits of the Terra Vergine. In one word, 
is the whole of the Val d’Edera to be ruined be- 
cause a Minister has a relation who desires to 
create an unnecessary railway? ” 

“ Ruined is a large word. These constructions 
appear to all, except primitive and ignorant peo- 
ple, to be improvements, acquisitions, benefits. In 
our province we are so aloof from all movement, 
so remote in our seclusion, so moss-grown in our 
antiquity, so wedded to the past, to old customs, 
old habits, old ways of act and thought, that the 
modern world shocks us as impious, odious, and 
intolerable.” 

“ Sir,” said Don Silverio with his most caustic 
smile, “ if you are here to sing the praises of 
modernity, allow me to withdraw from the duet. 
I venture to ask you, as I asked you this morning, 
one plain question. To whom is Adone Alba, to 
whom are my people of Ruscino, to appeal against 
this sequestration ? ” 

“ To no one. The Prefect approves; the Min- 
ister approves; the local deputies approve; I and 
my municipal and provincial councils approve; 
Parliament has approved and authorised. Who 
remain opposed? A few small landowners and 


The Waters of Edera 257 

a mob of poor persons living in your village of 
Ruscino and in similar places. ,, 

“ Who can create grave disorders and will do 
so.” 

“ Disorders, even insurrections, do not greatly 
alarm authority nowadays; they are easily re- 
pressed since the invention of quick-firing guns. 
The army is always on the side of order.” 

Don Silverio rose. 

“ Most honourable Corradini ! your views and 
mine are so far asunder that no amount of dis- 
cussion can assimilate them. Allow me to salute 
you.” 

“ Wait one instant, reverence,” said the syndic. 
“ May I ask how it is that an ecclesiastic of your 
appearance and your intellect can have been buried 
so long in such an owls’ nest as Ruscino? ” 

“ Sir,” replied Don Silverio very coldly, “ ask 
my superiors; I am but one of the least of the 
servants of the Church.” 

“ You might be one of her greatest servants, if 
influence — ” 

“ I abhor the word influence. It means a bribe 
too subtle to be punished, too gilded to alarm.” 

“ Nay, sometimes it is but a word in season, a 
pressure in the right place.” 


258 The Waters of Edera 

“ It means that which cannot serve the poor 
man without degrading him.” 

“ But — but — if as a reward for duty, advance- 
ment came to you ? ” 

“ I fail to understand.” 

“ Let me speak frankly. With your superiority 
to them you must easily rule the embryo rioters of 
the Val d’Edera. If, to your efforts it should be 
owing that the population remain quiet, and that 
this Adone Alba and others in a similar position, 
come to me in an orderly manner and a pliant 
spirit, I will engage that this service to us on your 
part shall not be forgotten.” 

He paused ; but Don Silverio did not reply. 

“ It is lamentable and unjust,” continued the 
mayor, “ that any one of your evident mental 
powers and capacity for higher place should be 
wasting your years and wasting your mind in a 
miserable solitude like Ruscino. If you will aid 
us to a pacific cession of the Val d’ Edera I will 
take upon myself to promise that your translation 
to a higher office shall be favoured by the Gov- 
ernment ” 

He paused again, for he did not see upon Don 
Silverio’s countenance that flattered and rejoiced 
expression which he expected; there was even 


The Waters of Edera 259 

upon it a look of scorn. He regretted that he had 
said so much. 

“ I thank your Excellency for so benevolent an 
interest in my poor personality,” said Don Sil- 
verio. “ But with the King’s government I have 
nothing to do. I am content in the place whereto 
I have been called, and have no disposition to as- 
sist the speculations of foreign companies. I have 
the honour to bid your Excellency good evening.” 

He bowed low, and backed out of the apartment 
this time. Count Corradini did not endeavour to 
detain him. 

When he got out into the air the strong moun- 
tain wind was blowing roughly down the steep 
and narrow street. He felt it with pleasure smite 
his cheeks and brows. 

“ Truly only from nature can we find strength 
and health,” he murmured. “ In the houses of 
men there are but fever and corruption, and un- 
cleanliness.” 


XIV 


To neglect no possible chance, he resolved to 
see the Prefect, if the Prefect consented to 
see him. This great official dwelt in a seaport 
city, whence he ruled the province, for such a 
period at least as his star should be in the ascend- 
ant, that is, whilst his political group should be 
in power. It was scarcely likely that a govern- 
ment official would be accessible to any arguments 
which a poor country priest could bring forward 
against a government project. Still, he resolved 
to make the effort, for at the Prefect’s name ap- 
prehension, keen and quaking, had leapt into 
Count Corradini’s faded eyes. 

From San Beda to the seaport city there 
stretched some forty miles of distance; the first 
part a descent down the spurs of the Apennines 
the latter half through level sandy country, with 
pine woods here and there. The first half he 
covered on foot, the second by the parliamentary 
train, which drew its long black line, snake-like 
260 


The Waters of Edera 261 

and slow, through the dunes and the stagnant 
waters. He had but a few francs in his waist- 
band, and could ill afford to expend those. 

When he reached his destination it was even- 
ing ; too late for him to present himself at the Pre- 
fecture with any chance of admittance. The Prior 
at San Beda had given him a letter to the vicar 
of the church of Sant Anselmo in the city, and 
by this gentleman he was warmly received and 
willingly lodged for the night. 

“ A government project — a project approved 
by ministers and deputies ? ” said his host on hear- 
ing what was the errand on which he came there. 
“ As well, my brother, might you assail the Gran 
Sasse d’ltalia ! There must be money in it, much 
money, for our Conscript Fathers.” 

“ I suppose so,” said Don Silverio, “ but I can- 
not see where it is to come from.” 

“ From the pockets of the taxpayers, my 
friend ! ” replied the incumbent of Sant Anselmo, 
with a smile as of a man who knows the world 
he lives in. “ The country is honeycombed by 
enterprises undertaken solely to this end — to pass 
the money which rusts in the pockets of fools 
into those of wise men who know how to make 
it run about and multiply. In what other scope 


262 


The Waters of Edera 


are all our betterments, our hygiene, our useless 
railway lines, our monstrous new streets, all our 
modernisation, put in the cauldron and kept boil- 
ing like a witch’s supper ? ” 

“ I know, I know,” said Don Silverio wearily. 
“ The whole land is overrun by affaristi, like red 
ants.” 

“ Do not slander the ants ! ” replied his host ; 
“ I would not offend the name of any honest, 
hard-working, little insect by giving it to the men 
through whom this country is eaten up by selfish 
avarice and unscrupulous speculation ! But tell 
me, what do you hope for from our revered Pre- 
fect?” 

“ I hope nothing, but I wish to leave no stone 
unturned. Tell me of him.” 

“ Of his Excellency, Giovacchino Gallo, senator 
and deputy and what not? There is much to tell, 
though there is nothing which could not be also 
told of many another gentleman in high place. It 
is the usual story ; the supple spine, the sharp eye, 
the greased foot. He was a young lawyer, useful 
to deputies. He married a lovely woman whom 
a prince had admired beyond him. He asked no 
questions; her dower was large. To do him jus- 
tee, he has always behaved very well to her. He 


The Waters of Edera 263 

entered Parliament early, and there was useful 
also, to existing institutions. He was instrumen- 
tal in carrying many railway and canal bills 
through the chamber. He has been always suc- 
cessful in his undertakings, and he knows that 
nothing succeeds like success. I am told that he 
and his wife are persone gratissime at the Quiri- 
nale, and that her jewels are extremely fine. When 
he was named Senator two years ago the Press, 
especially the Press of the Right, saluted his nom- 
ination as strengthening the Senate by the acces- 
sion to it of a person of impeccable virtue, of en- 
lightened intellect, and of a character cast in an- 
tique moulds of noble simplicity and Spartan cour- 
age. You think, my brother, that this favourite of 
fortune is likely to favour your plea for your par- 
ishioners ? ” 

“ Dear and revered brother,” replied Don Sil- 
verio, “ I came hither with no such illusions. If 
I had done, your biography of this functionary 
would have dispelled them.” 

Nevertheless, although without hope, at two 
o’clock of that day he went to the audience which 
was granted him at the intervention of the bishop 
of the city, obtained by means of the vicar of Sant 
Anselmo. 


The Waters of Edera 


264 

The Prefecture was situated in a palace of six- 
teenth century architecture, a noble and stately 
place of immense size, greatly injured by tele- 
graph and telephone wires stretching all round it, 
the post-office and the tax offices being situated on 
the ground floor, and the great Central Court 
daubed over with fresh paint and whitewash. 
Some little soldiers in dingy uniforms, ill-cut and 
ill-fitting, stood about gates and doors. On the 
first floor were the apartments occupied by his 
Excellency. Don Silverio was kept waiting for 
some time in a vestibule of fine proportions 
painted by Diotisalvi, with a colossal marble 
group in its centre of the death of Caesar. 

He looked at it wistfully. 

“ Ah, Giulio ! ” he murmured, “ what use were 
your conquests, what use was your genius, the 
greatest perchance the world has ever seen ? What 
use? You were struck in the throat like a felled 
ox, and the land you ruled lies bleeding at every 
pore ! ” 

In a quarter of an hour he was ushered through 
other large rooms into one of great architectural 
beauty, where the Prefect was standing by a writ- 
ing-table. 

Giovacchino Gallo was a short, stout person 


The Waters of Edera 265 

with a large stomach, a bald head, bright restless 
eyes, and a high, narrow forehead; his face was 
florid, like the face of one to whom the pleasures 
of the table are not alien. His address was cour- 
teous but distant, stiff, and a little pompous; he 
evidently believed in himself as a great person, 
and only unbent to other greater persons, when 
he unbent so vastly that he crawled. 

“ What can I do for your Reverence?” he 
asked, as he seated himself behind the writing- 
table and pointed to a chair. 

The words were polite but the tone was curt ; it 
was officialism crystallised. 

Don Silverio explained the purpose of his visit, 
and urged the prayers of his people. “ I am but 
the vicar of Ruscino,” he said in explanation, 
“ but in this matter I plead for all the natives 
of the Val d’ Edera. Your Excellency is Governor 
of this part of the province in which the Edera 
takes its rise, and has its course. My people, and 
all those others who are not under my ministry, 
but whose desires and supplications I represent, 
venture to look to you for support in their great 
distress, and intercession for them against this ca- 
lamity.” 

The face of the Prefect grew colder and sterner, 


266 


The Waters of Edera 


his eyes got an angry sparkle, his plump, rosy 
hands closed on a malachite paper-knife; he 
wished the knife were of steel, and the people of 
the Val d’Edera had but one head. 

“ Are you aware, sir,” he said impatiently, 
“ that the matter of which you speak has had the 
ratification of Parliament ? ” 

“ But it has not had the ratification of the per- 
sons whom it most concerns.” 

“ Do you suppose, then, when a great public 
work is to be accomplished the promoters are to 
go hat in hand for permission to every peasant 
resident on the area? ” 

“ A great public work seems to me a large ex- 
pression; too large for this case. The railway is 
not needed. The acetylene works are a private 
speculation. I venture to recall to your Excel- 
lency that these people, whom you would ignore, 
own the land, or, where they do not own it, have 
many interests both in the land and the water.” 

“ Their interests are 'considered and will be 
compensated,” said the Prefect. “ I do not admit 
that any of them can claim more.” 

“ Pardon me, your Excellency, but that is a 
phrase: it is not a fact. You could not, if you 
gave them millions, compensate them for the seiz- 


The Waters of Edera 267 

ure of their river and their lands. These belong 
to them and to their descendants by natural right. 
They cannot be deprived of these by Act of Par- 
liament without gross injury and injustice.” 

“ There must be suffering for the individual in 
all benefit of the general ! ” 

“ And doubtless, sir, when one is not the indi- 
vidual the suffering appears immaterial ! ” 

“ What an insolent priest ! ” thought Giovac- 
chino Gallo, and struck the paper-knife with an- 
ger on the table. 

“ Take my own parishioners alone,” pursued 
Don Silverio. “ Their small earnings depend en- 
tirely upon the Edera water; it gives them their 
food, their bed, their occupation; it gives them 
health and strength; it irrigates their little hold- 
ings, extra mnros , on which they and their fami- 
lies depend for grain and maize and rice. If you 
change their river-bed into dry land they will 
starve. Are not your own countrymen dearer to 
you than the members of a foreign syndicate? ” 

“ There will be work for them at the acetylene 
factory.” 

“ Are they not free men ? Are they to be driven 
like slaves to a work which would be hateful to 
them ? These people are country born and country 


268 


The Waters of Edera 


bred. They labour in the open air, and have done 
so for generations. Pardon me, your Excellency, 
but every year the King’s Government forces into 
exile thousands, tens of thousands, of our hard- 
working peasants with their families. The taxa- 
tion of the land and of all its products lay waste 
thousands of square miles in this country. The 
country is being depleted and depopulated, and 
the best of its manhood is being sent out of it by 
droves to Brazil, to La Plata, to the Argentines, 
to anywhere and everywhere, where labour is 
cheap and climate homicidal. The poor are packed 
on emigrant ships and sent with less care than 
crates of fruit receive. They consent to go be- 
cause they are famished here. Is it well for a 
country to lose its labouring classes, its frugal, 
willing, and hard-working manhood? to pack 
them off acioss the oceans by contract with other 
states? The Government has made a contract 
with a Pa^ fic island for five thousand Italians? 
Are they free men or are they slaved Can your 
Excellency call my people free who are allowed 
no voice against the seizure of their own river, 
and to whom you offer an unwholesome and in- 
door labour as compensation for the ruin of their 
lives? Now, they are poor indeed, but they are 


The Waters of Edera 269 

contented ; they keep body and soul together, they 
live on their natal soil, they live as their fathers 
lived. Is it just, is it right, is it wise to turn these 
people into disaffection and despair by an act of 
tyranny and spoliation through which the only 
gainers will be foreign speculators abroad and at 
home the gamblers of the Bourses ? Sir, I do not 
believe that the world holds people more patient, 
more long-suffering, more pacific under dire prov- 
ocation, or more willing to subsist on the poorest 
and hardest conditions than Italians are ; is it right 
or just or wise to take advantage of that national 
resignation to take from half a province the nat- 
ural air and the natural beauty with which God 
himself has dowered it in the gift of the moun- 
tain-born stream? You are powerful, sir, you 
have the ear of the Government, will you not try 
to stop this infamous theft of the Edera water 
whilst there is still time? ” 

Don Silverio spoke with that eloquence and 
with that melody of voice which few could bear 
unmoved; and even the dull ear and the hard 
heart of the official who heard him were for one 
brief moment moved as by the pathos of a song 
sung by some great tenor. 

But that moment was very brief. Over the 


2jo The Waters of Edera 

face of Giovacchino Gallo a look passed at once 
brutal and suspicious. “ Curse this priest ! ” he 
thought; “ he will give us trouble.” 

He rose, stiff, cold, pompous, with a frigid 
smile upon his red, full bon viveur’s lips. 

“If you imagine that I should venture to at- 
tack, or even presume to criticise, a matter which 
the Most Honourable the Minister of Agriculture 
has in his wisdom approved and ratified, you must 
have a strange conception of my fitness for my 
functions. As regards yourself, Reverend Sir, I 
regret that you appear to forget that the chief 
duty of your sacred office is to inculcate to your 
flock unquestioning submission to Governmental 
decrees.” 

“ Is that your Excellency’s last word? ” 

“ It is my first, and my last, word.” 

Don Silverio bowed low. 

“ You may regret it, sir,” he said simply, and 
left the writing-table and crossed the room. But 
as he approached the door the Prefect, still stand- 
ing, said, “ Wait!” 

Gallo opened two or three drawers in his table 
searched for some papers, looked over them, leav- 
ing the priest always standing between him and 
the door. Don Silverio was erect; his tall, frail 


The Waters of Edera 271 

form had a great majesty in it; his pallid features 
were stem. 

“ Return a moment,” said Gallo. 

“ I can hear your Excellency where I am,” re- 
plied Don Silverio, and did not stir.” 

“ I have here reports from certain of my 
agents,” said Gallo, fingering his various papers, 
“ that there is and has been for some time a sub- 
versive movement amongst the sparse popula- 
tion of the Val d’Edera.” 

Don Silverio did not speak or stir. 

“ It is an agrarian agitation,” continued Gallo, 
“ limited in its area, with little probability of 
spreading, but it exists; there are meetings by 
night, both open-air and secret meetings ; the lat- 
ter take place now in one farmhouse, now in an- 
other. The leader of this noxious and unlawful 
movement is one Adone Alba. He is of your par- 
ish.” 

He lifted his eyelids and flashed a quick, search- 
ing glance at the priest. 

“ He is of my parish,” repeated Don Silverio, 
with no visible emotion. 

“ You know of this agitation? ” 

“ If I did, sir, I should not say so. But I am 
not in the confidence of Adone Alba.” 


2J2 The Waters of Edera 

“ Of course I do not ask you to reveal the se- 
crets of the confessional, but ” 

“ Neither in the confessional or out of it have 
I heard anything whatever from him concerning 
any such matter as that of which you speak.” 

“ He is a young man? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And owner of the land known as the Terra 
Vergine? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And his land is comprised in that which will 
be taken by the projected works? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Are you sure that he has not sent you here? ” 

“ My parishioners are not in the habit of ‘ send- 
ing ’ me anywhere. You reverse our respective 
positions.” 

“ Humility is not one of your ecclesiastical vir- 
tues, Most Reverend.” 

“ It may be so.” 

Galba thrust his papers back into their drawer 
and locked it with a sharp click. 

“ You saw the Syndic of San Beda? ” 

“ I did.” 

“ What did he say to you? ” 


The Waters of Edera 


2 73 

“ Much what you say. Official language is al- 
ways limited and learned by rote.” 

Galba would willingly have thrown his bronze 
inkstand at the insolent ecclesiastic; his temper 
was naturally choleric, though years of synco- 
phancy and state service had taught him to con- 
trol it. 

“Well, Reverend Sir!” he said, with ill-con- 
cealed irritation, “ this conversation is I see use- 
less. You protect and screen your people. Per- 
haps I cannot blame you for that, but you will 
allow me to remind you that it is my duty to see 
that the order and peace of this district are not in 
any manner disturbed ; and that any parish priest 
if he fomented dissatisfaction or countenanced 
agitation in his district, would be much more se- 
verely dealt with by me than any civilian would 
be in the same circumstances. We tolerate and 
respect the Church so long as she remains strictly 
within her own sphere, but so long only.” 

“ We are all perfectly well aware of the con- 
ditions attached to the placet and the exequator 
at all times, and we are all conscious that even 
the limited privileges of civilians are denied to 
us ! ” replied Don Silverio. “ I have the honour 
to wish your Excellency good morning.” 


The Waters of Edera 


274 

He closed the door behind him. 

“ Damnation ! ” said Giovacchino Gallo ; “ that 
is a strong man! Is Mother Church blind that 
she lets such an one rust and rot in the miserable 
parish of Ruscino ? ” 

When Don Silverio rejoined the Vicar of Sant 
Anselmo the latter asked him anxiously how his 
errand had sped. 

“ It was waste of breath and of words,” he an- 
swered. “ I might have known that it would be 
so with any Government official.” 

“ But you might have put a spoke in Count 
Corradini’s wheel. If you had told Gallo that the 
other is trafficking ” 

“ Why should I betray a man who received me 
in all good faith ? And what good would it have 
accomplished if I had done so ? ” 

And more weary than ever in mind and body 
he returned to Ruscino. 

As he had left the Prefect’s presence that emi- 
nent person had rung for his secretary. 

“ Brandone, send me Sarelli.” 

In a few moments Sarelli appeared ; he was the 
usher of the Prefecture by appointment ; by taste 
and in addition he was its chief spy. He was a 
native of that city, and a person of considerable 


The Waters of Edera 275 

acumen and excellent memory; ne never needed 
to make memoranda — there is nothing so danger- 
ous to an official as written notes. 

“ Sarelli, what are the reports concerning the 
vicar of Ruscino ? ” 

Sarelli stood respectfully at attention; he had 
been a non-commissioned officer of artillery, and 
answered in rapid but clear tones : 

“ Great ability — great eloquence — disliked by 
superiors ; formerly great preacher in Rome ; sup- 
posed to be at Ruscino as castigation; learned — 
benevolent — correct.” 

“ Humph ! ” said Galla, disappointed. “ Not 
likely then to cause trouble or disorder? — to ne- 
cessitate painful measures? ” 

Sarelli rapidly took his cue. 

“ Hitherto, your Excellency, uniformly correct ; 
except in one instance ” 

“ That instance ? ” 

“Was five years ago, in the matter of the ma- 
dandriro, Ferrero. Your Excellency will have 
heard of Ferrero Ulisse, a great robber of the 
lower Abruzzi ? ” 

“ I have : continue.” 

“ Ferrero Ulisse was outlawed ; his band had 
been killed or captured, every one ; he had lost his 


2j6 The Waters of Edera 

right arm; he hid for many years in the lower 
woods of the Abruzzi ; he came down at night to 
the farmhouses, the people gave him food and 
drink, and aided him ” 

“ Their criminal habit always: continue.” 

“ Sometimes in one district, sometimes in an- 
other, he was often in the macchia of the Val 
d’ Edera. The people of the district, and espe- 
cially of Ruscino, protected him. They thought 
him a saint, because once when at the head of his 
band, which was then very strong, he had come 
into Ruscino and done them no harm, but only 
eaten and drunk, and left a handful of silver 
pieces to pay for what he and his men had taken. 
So they protected him now, and oftentimes for 
more than a year he came out of the macchia, and 
the villagers gave him all they could, and he went 
up and down Ruscino as if he were a king; and 
this lasted for several seasons, and, as we learned 
afterwards, Don Silverio Frascaro had cognisance 
of this fact, but did nothing. When Ferrero 
Ulisse was at last captured (it is nine years ago 
come November, and it was not in Ruscino but in 
the woods above), and brought to trial, many 
witnesses were summoned, and amongst them 
this Don Silverio; and the judge said to him, 


The Waters of Edera 277 

‘ You had knowledge that this man came often- 
times into your parish ? ' and Don Silverio an- 
swered, ‘ I had.’ ‘ You knew that he was an out- 
law, in rupture with justice?' ‘I did,’ he an- 
swered. Then the judge struck his fist with an- 
ger on his desk. ‘ And you a priest, a guardian 
of order, did not denounce him to the authori- 
ties ? ’ Then Don Silverio, your Excellency, quite 
quietly, but with a smile (for I was there close 
to him), had the audacity to answer the judge. 
‘ I am a priest,' he said, 4 and I study my breviary, 
but I do not find in it any command which au- 
thorises me to betray my fellow-creatures.' That 
made a terrible stir in the tribunal, your Excel- 
lency. They talked of committing him to gaol 
for contempt of court and for collusion with the 
outlaw. But it took place at San Beda, where 
they are all papalini, as your Excellency knows, 
and nothing was done, sir.” 

“ That reply is verily like this priest ! ” thought 
Giovacchino Gallo. “ A man of ability, of intel- 
lect, of incorruptible temper, but a man as like as 
not to encourage and excuse sedition.” 

Aloud he said, “ You may go, Sarelli. Good 
morning.” 

“ May I be allowed a word, sir? ” 


278 The Waters of Edera 

“ Speak.” 

“ May it not well be, sir, then Don Silverio’s 
organisation or suggestion is underneath this in- 
surrectionary movement of the young men in the 
Val d’Edera? ” 

“ It is possible ; yes. See to it.” 

“ Your servant, sir.” 

Sarelli withdrew, elated. He loved tracking, 
like a bloodhound, for the sheer pleasure of the 
“ cold foot chase.” The official views both lay- 
man and priest with contempt and aversion ; both 
are equally his prey, both equally his profit; he 
lives by them and on them, as the galleruca does 
on the elm tree, whose foliage it devours, but he 
despises them because they are not officials, as the 
galleruca doubtless, if it can think, despises the 
elm. 


XV 


Of course his absence could not be hidden 
from any in his parish. The mere presence of the 
rector of an adjacent parish, who had taken his 
duties, sufficed to reveal it. For so many years 
he had never stirred out of Ruscino in winter cold 
or summer heat, that none of his people could 
satisfactorily account to themselves for his now 
frequent journeys. The more sagacious supposed 
that he was trying to get the project for the river 
undone; but they did not all have so much faith 
in him. Many had always been vaguely suspicious 
of him, he was so wholly beyond their compre- 
hension. They asked Adone what he knew, or, if 
he knew nothing, what he thought. Adone put 
them aside with an impatient, imperious gesture. 
“ But you knew when he went to Rome? ” they 
persisted. Adone swung himself loose from them 
with a movement of anger. It hurt him to speak 
of the master he had renounced, of the friend he 
had forsaken. His conscience shrank from any 
279 


280 


The Waters of Edera 


distrust of Don Silverio ; yet his old faith was no 
more alive. He was going rapidly down a steep 
descent, and in that downward rush he lost all his 
higher instincts; he was becoming insensible to 
everything except the thirst for action, for ven- 
geance. 

To the man who lives in a natural state away 
from cities it appears only virile and just to de- 
fend himself, to avenge himself, with the weapons 
which nature and art have given him ; he feels no 
satisfaction in creeping and crawling through the 
labyrinths of the law, and he cannot see why he, 
the wronged, should be forced to spend, and wait, 
and humbly pray, while the wrongdoer may go, 
in the end, unchastised. Such a tribunal as St. 
Louis held under an oak-tree, or the Emperor Ak- 
bar in a mango grove, would be intelligible to 
him; but the procedure, the embarrassment, the 
sophistries, the whole machinery of modern law 
are abhorrent to him. 

He yearned to be the Tell, the Massaniello, the 
Andreas Hofer, of his province; but the apathy 
and supineness and timidity of his neighbours tied 
his hands. He knew that they were not made of 
the stuff with which a leader could hope to con- 
quer. All his fiery appeals fell like shooting stars, 


The Waters of Edera 


281 


brilliant but useless; all his vehement excitations 
did little more than scare the peasants whom he 
sought to rouse. A few bold spirits like his own 
seconded his efforts and aided his propaganda; 
but these were not numerous enough to leaven the 
inert mass. 

His plan was primitive and simple: it was to 
oppose by continual resistance every attempt 
which should be made to begin the projected 
works upon the river ; to destroy at night all which 
should be done in the day, and so harass and in- 
timidate the workmen who should be sent there 
so that they should, in fear and fatigue, give up 
their labours. They would certainly be foreign 
workmen; that is, workmen from another prov- 
ince; probably from Apulia. It was said that 
three hundred of them were coming that week to 
begin the works above Ruscino. He reckoned that 
he and those he led would have the advantage of 
local acquaintance with the land and water, and 
could easily, having their own homes as base, 
carry on a guerilla warfare for any length of time. 
No doubt, he knew, the authorities would send 
troops to the support of the foreign labourers, but 
he believed that when the resolve of the district 
to oppose at all hazards any interference with the 


282 


The Waters of Edera 


Edera should be made clear, the Government 
would not provoke an insurrection for the sake of 
favouring a foreign syndicate. So far as he rea- 
soned at all, he reasoned thus. 

But he forgot, or rather he did not know, that 
the lives of its people, whether soldiers or civil- 
ians, matter very little to any Government, and 
that its own vanity, which it calls dignity, and the 
financial interests of its supporters, matter greatly; 
where the Executive has been defied there it is in- 
exorable and unscrupulous. 

Both up and down the river there was but one 
feeling of bitter rage against the impending ruin 
of the water; there was but one piteous cry of 
helpless desperation. But to weld this, which was 
mere emotion, into that sterner passion of which 
resistance and revolt are made, was a task beyond 
his powers. 

“ No one will care for us ; we are too feeble, 
we are too small,” they urged ; they were willing 
to do anything were they sure it would succeed, 
but 

“ But who can be sure of anything under 
heaven ? ” replied Adone. “ You are never sure of 
your crops until the very last day that they are 
reaped and carried; yet you sow.” 


The Waters of Edera 283 

Yes, they granted that; but sowing grain was 
a safe, familiar labour; the idea of sowing lead 
and death alarmed them. Still there were some, 
most of them those who were dwellers on the 
river, or owners of land abutting on it, who were 
of more fiery temper, and these thought as Adone 
thought, that never had a rural people juster cause 
for rebellion; and these gathered around him in 
those meetings by night of which information had 
reached the Prefecture, for there are spies in every 
province. 

Adone had changed greatly ; he had grown thin 
and almost gaunt ; he had lost his beautiful aspect 
of adolescence; his eyes had no longer their clear 
and happy light; they were keen and fierce, and 
looked out defiantly from under his level brows. 

He worked on his own land usually, by day, to 
stave off suspicion; but by night he scoured the 
country up and down the stream wherever he be- 
lieved he could find proselytes or arms. He had 
no settled plan of action; he had no defined pro- 
ject ; his only idea was to resist, to resist, to resist. 
Under a leader he would have been an invaluable 
auxiliary, but he had not knowledge enough of 
men, or of the way to handle them, to direct a 
revolt; and he had no knowledge whatever of 


284 The Waters of Edera 

stratagem, or manoeuvre, or any of the manifold 
complications of guerilla warfare. His calm and 
dreamy life had not prepared him to be all at once 
a man of action : action was akin alike to his tem- 
perament and to his habits. All his heart, his 
blood, his imagination, were on fire; but behind 
them there was not that genius of conception and 
command which alone makes the successful chief 
of a popular cause. 

His mother said nothing to disturb or deter him 
on his course, but in herself she was sorely afraid. 
She kept her lips shut because she would have 
thought it unworthy to discourage him, and she 
could not believe in his success, try how she might 
to compel her faith to await miracles. 

Little Nerina alone gave him that -unquestion- 
ing, unhesitating, blind belief which is so dear to 
the soul of man. Nerina was convinced that at 
his call the whole of the Val d’ Edera would rise 
full-armed, and that no hostile power on earth 
would dare to touch the water. To her any mira- 
cle seemed possible. Whatever he ordered, she 
did. She had neither fear or hesitation. She 
would slip out of her room unheard, and speed 
over the dark country on moonless nights on his 
errands; she would seek for weapons and bring 


The Waters of Edera 


285 

them in and distribute them; she would take his 
messages to those on whom he could rely, and 
rouse to his cause the hesitating and half-hearted 
by repetition of his words. Her whole young life 
had caught fire at his ; and her passionate loyalty 
accepted without comprehending all he enjoined 
on her or told to her. 

The danger which she ran and the concealment 
of which she was guilty, never disturbed her for 
an instant. What Adone ordained was her law. 
Had he not taken pity on her in her misery that 
day by the river? Was she not to do anything 
and everything to serve him and save the river? 
This was her sole creed ; but it sufficed to fill her 
still childish soul. If with it there was mingled a 
more intense and more personal sentiment, she 
was unconscious of, and he indifferent to, it. He 
sent her to do his bidding as he would have sent 
a boy, because he recognized in her that leal and 
fervent fidelity to a trust of which he was not sure 
in others. 

Although she was a slender brown thing, like 
a nightingale, she was strong, elastic, untiring; 
nothing seemed to fatigue her ; she always looked 
as fresh as the dew, as vigorous as a young cher- 
ry-tree. Her big hazel eyes danced under their 


286 


The Waters of Edera 


long lashes, and her pretty mouth was like one 
of the four-season roses which bloomed on the 
house wall. She was not thought much to look 
at in a province where the fine Roman type is 
blended with the Venetian colouring in the beauty 
of its women ; but she had a charm and a grace of 
her own; wild and rustic, like that of a spray of 
grass or a harvest mouse swinging on a stalk of 
wheat. 

She was so lithe, so swift, so agile; so strong 
without effort, so buoyant and content, that she 
carried with her the sense of her own perfect 
health and happiness, as the east wind blowing 
up the Edera water bore with it the scent of the 
sea. 

But of any physical charm in her Adone saw 
nothing. A great rage filled his soul, and a black 
cloud seemed to float between him and all else 
which was not the wrong done to him and his 
and the water of Edera. Until he should have 
lifted off the land and the stream this coming 
curse which threatened them, life held nothing 
for him which could tempt or touch him. 

He used the girl for his own purposes and did 
not spare her ; but those purposes were only those 
of his self-imposed mission, and all of which was 


The Waters of Edera 287 

youthful, alluring, feminine, in her he saw noth- 
ing: she was to him no more than a lithe, swift, 
hardy filly would have been which he should have 
ridden over the moors and pastures to its death 
in pursuit of his end. He who had been always 
so tender of heart had grown cruel; he would 
have flung corpse upon corpse into the water if 
by such holocaust he could have reached his pur- 
pose. What had drawn him to Nerina had been 
that flash of ferocity which he had seen in her; 
that readiness to go to the bitter end in the sweet 
right of vengeance; instincts which formed so 
singular a contrast to the childish gaiety and the 
sunny goodwill of her normal disposition. 

He knew that nothing which could have been 
done to her would have made her reveal any con- 
fidence he placed in her. That she was often out 
all the hours of the night on errands to the widely 
scattered dwellings of the peasants did not pre- 
vent her coming at dawn into the cattle stalls to 
feed and tend the beasts. 

And she was so dexterous, so sure, so silent; 
even the sharp eyes of old Gianna never detected 
her nocturnal absence, even the shrewd observa- 
tion of Clelia Alba never detected any trace of 
fatigue in her or any negligence in her tasks. 


288 


The Waters of Edera 


She was always there when they needed her, did 
all that she was used to do, was obedient to every 
word or sign ; they did not know that as she car- 
ried the water pails, or cut the grass, or swept the 
bricks, or washed the linen, her heart sung 
proudly within her a joyous song because she 
shared a secret — a perilous secret — of which the 
elder woman knew nothing. Any night a stray 
shot might strike her as she ran over the moors, 
or through the heather; any night a false step 
might pitch her headlong into a ravine or a pool ; 
any night, returning through the shallows of the 
ford, she might miss her footing and fall into one 
of the bottomless holes that the river hid in its 
depths; but the danger of it only endeared her 
errand the more to her ; made her the prouder that 
she was chosen for it. 

“ I fear nothing,” she said to him truthfully ; 
“ I fear only that you should not be content.” 

And as signal fires run from point to point, or 
hill to hill, so she ran from one farm house to an- 
other bearing the messages which organized those 
gatherings whereof Giavacchino Gallo had the 
knowledge. The men she summoned and spoke 
with were rough peasants, for the most part, rude 
as the untanned skins they wore at their work, 


The Waters of Edera 289 

but not one of them ever said a gross word or 
gave a lewd glance to the child. 

She was la bimba to them all ; a brave little soul 
and honest ; they respected her as if she were one 
of their own children, or one of their own sisters, 
and Nerina coming through the starlight, with 
an old musket slung at her back, which Adone 
had taught her to use, and her small, bronzed feet 
leaping over the ground like a young goat’s, was 
a figure which soon became familiar and welcome 
to the people. She seemed to them like a harbin- 
ger of hope ; she had few words, but those words 
reverberated with courage and energy ; she moved 
the supine, she braced the timid ; she brought the 
wavering firmness, and the nervous strength ; she 
said what Adone had taught her to say, but she 
put into it all her own immense faith in him, all 
her own innocent and undoubted certainty that 
his cause was just and would be blessed by heaven. 

The Edera water belonged to them. Would 
they let it be turned away from their lands and 
given to strangers ? 

As a little spaniel or beagle threshes a covert, 
obedient to his master’s will and working only 
to please him, so she scoured the country-side and 
drove in, by persuasion, or appeal, or threat, all 


The Waters of Edera 


290 

those who would lend ear to her, to the midnight 
meetings on the moors, or in the homesteads, 
where Adone harangued them, with eloquence 
ever varied, on a theme which was never stale, 
because it appealed at once to the hearts and to 
the interests of his hearers. 

But many of them, though fascinated, remained 
afraid. 

“When all is said, what can we do?” they 
muttered. “ Authority has a long arm.” 

The people of the district talked under their 
breath of nothing else than of this resistance 
which was being preached as a holy war by the 
youth of the Terra Vergine. They were secret 
and silent, made prudent by many generations 
which had suffered from harsh measures and bru- 
tal reprisals, but the league he proclaimed fasci- 
nated and possessed them. Conspiracy has a se- 
duction subtle and irresistible as gambling for 
those who have once become its servants. It is 
potent as wine, and colours the brain which it in- 
flames. To these lowly, solitary men, who knew 
nothing beyond their own fields and coppices and 
waste-lands, its excitement came like a magic phil- 
ter to change the monotony of their days. They 
were most of them wholly unlettered; knew not 


The Waters of Edera 


291 


their ABC; had only learned the law of the sea- 
sons, and the earth, and trees which grew, and 
the beasts which grazed; but they had imagina- 
tion; they had the blood of ancient races; they 
were neither dolts nor boors, though Adone in his 
wrath called them so. They were fascinated by 
the call to rise and save their river. A feeling, 
more local than patriotism, but more noble than 
interest, moved them to share in his passionate 
hatred of the intruders, and to hearken to his ap- 
peals to them to arm and rise as one man. 

But, on the other hand, long years of servitude 
and hardship had made them timid as gallant 
dogs are made so by fasting or the whip. “ What 
are we? ” some of them said to him. “We are 
no more than the earthworms in the soil.” For 
there is a pathetic humility in these descendants 
of the ancient rulers of the world ; it is a humility 
born of hope deferred, of the sense of every 
change being but a change of masters, of the 
knowledge that the sun rises and sets upon their 
toil, as it did on that of their fathers, as it will do 
on that of their children, and will never see it 
lessened, nor see the fruits thereof given to them- 
selves or to their sons. It is a humility which is 


292 The Waters of Edera 

never ignoble, but is infinitely, because hopelessly, 
sad. 

The river was their own, surely, yes; but, like 
so much else that was their own, the State 
claimed it. 

“ What can be more yours than the son you 
beget, the fruit of your loins, the child for whom 
you have laboured through long years? ” said an 
old man to him once. “ Yet the State, as soon 
as he is of use to you, the State takes him, makes 
a beast of burden of him, kills his youth and his 
manhood; sends him, without a word to you, to 
be maimed and slaughtered in Africa, his very 
place of death unknown to you; his body — the 
body you begat and which his mother bore in her 
womb and nourished and cherished — is devoured 
by the beasts of the desert and the birds of the 
air. They take all; why shall they not take the 
river also ? ” 

The glowing faith of Adone was flung, as the 
sunlit salt spray of the ocean is cast on a cliff of 
basalt, against the barrier of that weary and pros- 
trate despair which the State dares to tell the 
poor is their duty and their portion upon earth. 

But the younger men listened to him more 
readily, being less bent and broken by long labour, 


The Waters of Edera 293 

and poor food, and many years of unanswered 
prayers. Of these some had served their time in 
regiments, and aided him to give some knowledge 
of drill and of the use of weapons to those who 
agreed with him to dispute by force the claim of 
strangers to the Edera water. 

These gatherings took place on waste lands or 
bare heath, or in clearings or hollows in the 
woods, and the tramp of feet and click of wea- 
pons scared the affrighted fox and the astounded 
badger. They dared not fire lest the sound should 
betray their whereabouts to some unfriendly ear ; 
but they went through all other military exercises 
as far as it lay in their power to do so. 

The extreme loneliness of the Edera valley was 
in their favour. Once in half a year, perhaps, 
half a troop of carabineers might ride through the 
district, but this was only if there had been any 
notable assassination or robbery; and of police 
there was none nearer than the town of San Beda. 

It was to arrange these nightly exercises, and 
summon to or warn off men from them, as might 
be expedient, that Nerina was usually sent upon 
her nocturnal errands. One night when she had 
been bidden by Adone to go to a certain hamlet 
in the woods to the north, the child, as she was 


The Waters of Edera 


294 

about to slip back the great steel bolts which 
fastened the house door, saw a light upon the 
stairs which she had just descended, and turning 
round, her hand upon the lock, saw Clelia Alba. 

“ Why are you out of your bed at this hour? ” 
said the elder woman. Her face was stern and 
dark. 

Nerina did not answer; her gay courage for- 
sook her ; she trembled. 

“ Why? ” asked Adone’s mother. 

“ I was going out,” answered the child. Her 
voice shook. She was clothed as usual in the day- 
time, but she had over her head a woollen wrap- 
per. She had not her musket, for she kept it in 
the hen-house, and was accustomed to take it as 
she passed that place. 

“ Going out ! At the fourth hour of the night? 
Is that an answer for a decent maiden? ” 

Nerina was silent. 

“ Go back to your room, and I will lock you in 
it; in the morning you will account to me.” 

Nerina recovered her self-possession, though 
she trembled still. 

“ Pardon me, Madame Clelia,” she said hum- 
bly, “ I must go out.” 


The Waters of Edera 295 

She did not look ashamed, and her small brown 
face had a resolute expression. 

A great anguish seized and wrung the heart of 
Clelia Alba. She knew that Adone was not in 
the house. Did he, the soul of purity and honour, 
seduce a girl who dwelt under his own roof? — 
carry on an intrigue with a little beggar, to his 
own shame and the outrage of his mother? Was 
this the true cause of his frequent absence, his 
many nights abroad ? Her dark brows contracted, 
her black eyes blazed. 

“ Go to your room, wanton ! ” she said in tones 
of thunder. “ In the morning you will answer to 
me.” 

But Nerina, who had before this slipped the 
bolts aside, and who had always kept her grasp 
upon the great key in the lock, suddenly turned 
it, pushed the oak door open, and before the elder 
woman was conscious of what she was doing, had 
dashed out into the air, and slammed the door 
behind her. The rush of wind had blown out the 
lamp in Clelia Alba’s hand. 

When, after fumbling vainly for some minutes 
to find the door, and bruising her hands against 
the wall and an oaken chair, she at last found it 
and thrust it open, the night without was moon- 


296 The Waters of Edera 

less and starless and stormy, and in its unillumed 
blackness she saw no trace of the little girl. She 
went out on to the doorstep and listened, but there 
was no sound. The wind was high ; the perfume 
of the stocks and wallflowers was strong; far 
away the sound of the river rushing through the 
sedges was audible in the intense stillness, an owl 
hooted, a night jar sent forth its sweet, strange, 
sighing note. Of Nerina there was no trace. Cle- 
lia Alba came within and closed the door, and 
locked and bolted it. 

The old woman Gianna had come downstairs 
with a lighted rush candle in her hand; she was 
scared and afraid. 

“ What is it? what is it, madame? ” 

Clelia Alba dropped down on the chair by the 
door. 

“ It is — it is — that the beggar’s spawn you 
would have me shelter is the leman of my son; 
and he has dishonoured his house and mine.” 

Gianna shook her grey head in solemn denial 
and disbelief. 

“ Sior’a, Clelia, do not say such words or think 
such thoughts of your son or of the child. She 
is as harmless as any flower that blows out there 
in the garden, and he is a noble youth, though 


The Waters of Edera 297 

now, by the wickedness of men, distraught and 
off his head. What makes you revile them so ? ” 

“ They are both out this night. Is not that 
enough ? ” 

Gianna was distressed ; from her chamber 
above she had heard the words which had passed 
between A done’s mother and Nerina, and knew 
the girl was gone. 

“ I would condemn others, but not Adone and 
the child,” she returned. “ For sure they do not 
do right to have secrets from you, but they are 
not such secrets as you think.” 

“ Enough ! ” said Clelia Alba sternly. “ The 
morning will show who is right. It suffices for 
me that the son of Valerio Alba, my son, has for- 
got his duty to his mother and his respect for 
himself.” 

Clelia Alba rose with effort from her chair, re- 
lighted her lamp at the old woman’s rush candle, 
and went slowly and heavily up the stairs. She 
felt stunned and outraged. Her son! — hers! to 
lie out of nights with a little nameless vagrant ! 

Gianna caught hold of her skirt. “ Madame — 
listen. I saw him born that day by the Edera 
water, and I have seen him every day of his life 
since till now. He would never do a base thing. 


298 The Waters of Edera 

Do not you, his mother, disgrace him by thinking 
of it for an hour. This thing is odd, is ugly, is 
strange, but wait to judge it ” 

Clelia Alba released her skirt from her old ser- 
vant’s grasp. 

“ You mean well, but you are crazed. Get you 
gone.” 

Gianna let go her hold and crept submissively 
down the stair. She set her rushlight on the 
floor and sat down in the chair by the door, and 
told her beads with shaking fingers. One or other 
of them, she thought, might come home either 
soon or late, for she did not believe that any 
amorous intimacy was the reason that they were 
both out — God knew where — in this windy, pitch- 
dark night. 

“ But he does wrong, he does wrong,” she 
thought. “ He sends the child on his errands 
perhaps, but he should remember a girl is like a 
peach, you cannot handle it ever so gently but its 
bloom goes; and he leaves us alone, two old 
women here, and we might have our throats cut 
before we should wake old Ettore in the stable. 

The night seemed long to her in the lone 
stone entrance, with the owls hooting round the 


The Waters of Edera 299 

house, and the winds blowing loud and tearing 
the tiles from the roof. Above, in her chamber, 
Adone’s mother walked to and fro all night sleep- 
less. 


XVI 


Gian n a before it was dawn went out in the 
hope that she might meet Adone on his return, 
and be able to speak to him before he could see 
his mother. She was also in extreme anxiety for 
Nerina, of whom she had grown fond. She did 
not think the little girl would dare return after 
the words of Clelia Alba. She knew the child 
was courageous, but timid, like an otter or a swal- 
She went to the edge of the river and waited; 
he must cross it to come home; but whether he 
would cross higher up or lower down she could 
not tell. There was the faint light which pre- 
ceded the rising of the sun. A great peace, a 
great freshness, were on the water and the land. 

“ Oh Lord, what fools we are ! ” thought the 
old woman. “ The earth makes itself anew for 
us with every dawn, and our own snarling, and 
fretting, and mourning clouds it all over for us, 
and we only see our own silly souls ! ” 

Soon, before the sun was rising, Adone came in 
300 


The Waters of Edera 301 

sight, passing with firm accustomed step across 
the undressed trunks of trees which were here 
thrown across the river to make a passage lower 
down the stream than the bridge of Ruscino. He 
was walking with spirit and ease, his head was 
erect, his belt was filled with arms, his eyes had 
sternness and command in them; he came from 
one of the military drillings in the woods, and 
had been content with it. Seeing old Gianna 
waiting there he understood that something must 
have happened, and his first fears were for his 
mother. 

“ Is she ill ? ” he cried, as he reached the bank 
of his own land. 

“ No ; she is well in health,” answered Gianna, 
“ but she is sorely grieved and deeply angered ; 
she found the girl Nerina going out at the dead 
of night.” 

Adone changed colour. He was silent. Gianna 
came close to him. 

“ The child and you both out all night, heaven 
knows where! What but one thing can your 
mother think ? ” 

“If she thinks but one thing, that thing is 
false.” 

“ Maybe. I believe so myself, but, Sior’ Clelia 


302 The Waters of Edera 

will not. Why do you send the girl out at such 
hours ? ” 

“ What did she say to my mother ? ” 

“ Nothing; only that she had to go.” 

“ Faithful little soul ! ” 

“ Aye ! And it is when little maids are faithful 
like this that men ruin them. I do not want to 
speak without respect to you, Adone, for I have 
eaten your bread and been sheltered by your roof 
through many a year; but for whatever end you 
send that child out of nights, you do a bad thing, 
a cruel thing, a thing unworthy of your stock; 
and if I know Clelia Alba — and who would know 
her if not I? — she will never let Nerina enter her 
house again.” 

Adone’s face grew dark. 

“ The house is mine. Nerina shall not be turned 
out of it.” 

“ Perhaps it is yours ; but it is your mother’s 
too, and you will scarce turn out your mother for 
the sake of a little beggar-girl? ”‘ 

Adone was silent; he saw the dilemma; he 
knew his mother’s nature ; he inherited it. 

“ Go you,” he said at last; “ go you and tell her 
that the child went out on my errands, indeed, but 


The Waters of Edera 303 

I have not seen her ; there is no collusion with her, 
and she is not and never will be dania of mine.” 

“ I will take her no such message, for she 
would not listen. Go you; say what you choose; 
perhaps she will credit you, perhaps she will not. 
Anyhow, you are warned. As for me, I will go 
and search for Nerina.” 

“ Do you mean she has not returned ? ” 

“ Certainly she has not. She will no more dare 
to return than a kicked dog. You forgot she is a 
young thing, a creature of nothing; she thinks 
herself no more than a pebble or a twig. Besides, 
your mother called her a wanton. That is a word 
not soon washed out. She is humble as a blade 
of grass, but she will resent that. You have much 
trouble with your rebellious work. You have 
done ill — ill — ill ! ” 

Adone submitted mutely to the upbraiding; he 
knew he had done selfishly, wrongfully, brutally, 
that which had seemed well to himself with no 
consideration of others. 

“ Get you gone and search for the child,” he 
said at last. “ I will go myself to my mother.” 

“ It is the least you can do. But you must not 
forget the cattle. Nerina is not there to see to 
them.” 


304 The Waters of Edera 

She pushed past him and went on to the foot- 
bridge; but midway across it she turned and 
called to him : “ I lit the fire, and the coffee is on 
it. Where am I to look for the child? In the 
heather? in the woods? up in Ruscino? down in 
the lower valley ? or may be at the presbytery ? ” 

“ Don Silverio is absent,” Adone called back 
to her ; and he passed on under the olive-trees to- 
wards his home. Gianna paused on the bridge 
and watched him till he was out of sight; then 
she went back herself by another path which led 
to the stables. A thought had struck her : Nerina 
was too devoted to the cattle to have let them 
suffer; possibly she was even now attending to 
them in their stalls. 

“ She is a faithful little thing as he said! ” the 
old servant muttered. “ Yes; and such as she are 
born to labour and to suffer, and to eat the bread 
of bitterness.” 

“ Where is she, Pierino? ” she said to the old 
white dog ; he was lying on the grass ; if the girl 
were lost, she thought, Pierino would be away 
somewhere looking for her. 

Gianna’s heart was hard against Adone; in a 
dim way she understood the hopes and the 
schemes which occupied him, but she could not 


The Waters of Edera 305 

forgive him for sacrificing to them his mother and 
this friendless child. It was so like a man, she said 
to herself, to tear along on what he thought a road 
to glory, and never heed what he trampled down 
as he went — never heed any more than the mower 
heeds the daisies. 

In the cattle stalls she found the oxen and the 
cows already watered, brushed, and content, with 
their pile of fresh grass beside them; there was 
no sound in the stables but of their munching and 
breathing, and now and then the rattle of the 
chains which linked them to their mangers. 

“ Maybe she is amongst the hay,” thought 
Gianna, and painfully she climbed the wide rungs 
of the ladder which led to the hay loft. There, 
sure enough, was Nerina, sound asleep upon the 
fodder. She looked very small, very young, very 
innocent. 

The old woman thought of the first day that 
she had seen the child asleep on the stone bench 
by the porch ; and her eyes grew dim. 

“ Who knows where you will rest to-morrow ? ” 
she thought; and she went backwards down the 
ladder noiselessly so as not to awaken a sleeper, 
whose awakening might be so sorrowful. 

Gianna went back to the house and busied her- 


306 The Waters of Edera 

self with her usual tasks ; she could hear the voices 
of Adone and Clelia Alba in the chamber above ; 
they sounded in altercation, but their words she 
could not hear. 

It was at dawn that same day that Don Silverio 
returned from his interviews with Count Corra- 
dini and Senatore Gallo. When he reached Rus- 
cino the little rector of the village in the woods 
had already celebrated mass. Don Silverio 
cleansed himself from the dust of travel, entered 
his church for his orisons, then broke his fast with 
bread and a plate of lentils, and whilst the day 
was still young took the long familiar way to the 
Terra Vergine. Whatever the interview might 
cost in pain and estrangement he felt that he 
dared not lose an hour in informing Adone of 
what was so dangerously known at the prefecture. 

“ He will not kill me,” he thought; “ and if he 
did, it would not matter much; — except for you, 
my poor little man,” he added to his dog Signo- 
rino, who was running gleefully in his shadow. 
Gianna saw him approaching as she looked from 
the kitchen window, and cried her thanks to the 
saints with passionate gratitude. Then she went 
out and met him. 

“ Praise be to the Madonna that you have come 


The Waters of Edera 


3°7 

back, Reverendissimo ! ” she cried. “ There are 
sore trouble and disputes under our roof.” 

“ I grieve to hear that,” he answered ; and 
thought, “ I fear I have lost my power to cast oil 
on the troubled waters.” 

He entered the great vaulted kitchen and sat 
down, for he was physically weary, having walked 
twenty miles in the past night. 

“ What you feel at liberty to tell me, let me 
hear,” he said to the old servant. 

Gianna told him in her picturesque warmly- 
coloured phrase what had passed between Sior’ 
Clelia and the little girl in the night; and what 
she had herself said to Adone at dawn ; and how 
Nerina was lying asleep in the hay-loft, being 
afraid , doubtless, to come up to the house. 

Don Silverio listened with pain and indigna- 
tion. 

“ What is he about to risk a female child on 
such errands? And why is his mother in such 
vehement haste to say cruel words and think un- 
just and untrue things? ” 

“ They are unjust and untrue, sir, are they 
not ? ” said Gianna. “ But it looked ill, you see ; 
a little creature going out in the middle of the 


308 The Waters of Edera 

night, and to be sure she was but a vagrant when 
she came to us.” 

“ And now — how does the matter stand? Has 
Adone convinced his mother of the girl’s inno- 
cence ? ” 

“ Whew ! That I cannot say, sir. They are 
upstairs ; and their voices were loud an hour ago. 
Now they are still. I had a mind to go up, but 
I am afraid.” 

“ Go up; and send Adone to me.” 

“ He is perhaps asleep, sir ; he came across the 
water at dawn.” 

“ If so, wake him. I must speak to him without 
delay.” 

Gianna went and came down quickly. 

“ He is gone out to work in the fields, sir. 
Madame told me so. If he do not work, the land 
will go out of cultivation, sir.” 

“ He may have gone to Nerina? ” 

“ I do not think so, sir. But I will go back to 
the stable and see.” 

“ And beg Sior’ Clelia to come down to me.” 

He was left alone in a few minutes in the great 
old stone chamber with its smell of dried herbs 
hanging from its rafters and of maize leaves 
baking in the oven. 


The Waters of Edera 


3°9 

The land would go out of cultivation — yes ! — 
and the acetylene factories would take the place 
of the fragrant garden, the olive orchards, the 
corn lands, the pastures. He did not wonder that 
Adone was roused to fury; but what fury would 
avail aught? What pain, what despair, what 
tears, would stay the desecration for an hour? 
The hatchet would hew it all down, and the steam 
plough would pass over it all, and then the stone 
and the mortar, the bricks and the iron, the en- 
gines, and the wheels, and the cauldrons, would 
be enthroned on the ruined soil : the gods of a 
soulless age. 

“ Oh, the pity of it ! The pity of it ! ” thought 
Don Silverio, as the blue sky shone through the 
grated window and against the blue sky a rose 
branch swung and a swallow circled. 

“ Your servant, Reverendissimo,” said the 
voice of Clelia Alba, and Don Silverio rose from 
his seat. 

“ My friend,” he said to her, “ I find you in 
trouble, and I fear that I shall add to it. But tell 
me first, what is this tale of Nerina? ” 

“ It is but this, sir; if Nerina enter here, I go.” 

“ You cannot be serious! ” 


“ If you think so, look at me.” 


310 The Waters of Edera 

He did look at her; at her severe aquiline fea- 
tures, at her heavy eyelids drooping over eyes of 
implacable wrath, at her firm mouth and jaw, 
cold as if cut in marble. She was not a woman to 
trifle or to waver; perhaps she was one who hav- 
ing received offence would never forgive. 

“But it is monstrous!” he exclaimed; “you 
cannot turn adrift a little friendless girl — you can- 
not leave your own house, your dead husband’s 
house — neither is possible — you rave ! ” 

“ It is my son’s house. He will harbour whom 
he will. But if the girl pass the doorstep I go. 
I am not too old to labour for myself.” 

“ My good woman — my dear friend — it is in- 
credible! I see what you believe, but I cannot 
pardon you for believing it. Even were it what 
you choose to think — which is not possible — 
surely your duty to a motherless and destitute girl 
of her tender years should counsel more benevo- 
lence? ” 

The face of Clelia Alba grew chillier and harder 
still. 

“ Sir, leave me to judge of my own duties as 
the mother of Adone, and the keeper of this house. 
He has told me that he is master here. I do not 


The Waters of Edera 31 1 

deny it. He is over age. He can bring her here 
if he chooses, but I go.” 

“ But you must know the child cannot live here 
with a young man ! ” 

“ Why not ? ” said Clelia Alba, and a cruel 
smile passed over her face. “ It seems to me 
more decent than lying out in the fields together 
night after night.” 

“ Silence ! ” said Don Silverio in that tone 
which awed the boldest. “ Of what avail is your 
own virtue if it makes you thus harsh, thus un- 
believing, thus ready to condemn ? ” 

“ I claim no more virtue than any clean-living 
woman should possess; but Valerio Alba would 
not have brought his leman into my presence, 
neither shall his son do so.” 

“ In your present mood words are wasted on 
you. Go to your chamber, Sior’ Clelia, and en- 
treat Heaven to soften your heart. There is sor- 
row enough in store for you without your creating 
misery out of suspicion and unbelief. This house 
will not long be either yours or Adone’s.” 

He left the kitchen and went out into the air; 
Clelia Alba was too proud, too dogged, in her 
obstinacy to endeavour to detain him or to ask 
him what he meant. 


312 The Waters of Edera 

“ Where is Adone ? ” he asked of the old man 
Ettore, who was carrying manure in a great skip 
upon his back. 

“ He is down by the five apple-trees, sir,” an- 
swered Ettore. 

The five apple-trees were beautiful old trees, 
gnarled, moss-grown, hoary, but still bearing 
abundant blossoms; they grew in a field which 
was that year being trenched for young vines, 
a hard back-breaking labour; the trenches were 
being cut obliquely so as not to disturb the apple- 
trees or injure some fine fig-trees which grew 
there. Adone was at work stripped to his shirt 
and hidden in the delved earth to his shoulders. 

He looked up from the trench and lifted his 
hat as he saw the priest enter the field; then he 
resumed his labour. 

“ Come out of your ditch and hearken to me. I 
will not weary you with many words.” 

Adone, moved by long habit of obedience and 
deference, leapt with his agile feet on to the bor- 
der of the trench and stood there, silent, sullen, 
ready to repel reproof with insolence. 

“ Is it worthy of you to ruin the name of a girl 
of sixteen by sending her on midnight errands to 
your fellow-rebels ? ” 


The Waters of Edera 3 1 3 

Don Silverio spoke bluntly; he spoke only on 
suspicion, but his tone was that of a direct 
charge. 

Adone did not doubt for a moment that he was 
in possession of facts. 

“Has the girl played us false?” he said 
moodily. 

“ I have not seen the girl,” replied Don Silverio. 
“ But it is a base thing to do, to use that child for 
errands of which she cannot know either the dan- 
ger or the illegality. You misuse one whose youth 
and helplessness should have been her greatest 
protection.” 

“ I had no one else that I could trust.” 

“ Poor little soul ! You could trust her, so you 
abused her trust ! No : I do not believe you are 
her lover. I do not believe you care for her more 
than for the clod of earth you stand on. But to 
my thinking that makes what you have done 
worse ; colder, more cruel, more calculating. Had 
you seduced her, you would at least feel that you 
owed her something. She has been a mere little 
runner, and slave to you — no more. Surely your 
knowledge that she depends on you ought to have 
sufficed to make her sacred ? ” 

Adone looked on the ground. His face was red 


314 The Waters of Edera 

with the dull flush of shame. He knew that he 
merited all these words and more. 

“ I will provide temporarily for her ; and you 
will send her out no more upon these errands/’ con- 
tinued Don Silverio. “ Perhaps, with time, your 
mother may soften to her ; but I doubt it.” 

“ The house is mine,” said Adone sullenly. 
“ She shall not keep Nerina out of it.” 

“You certainly cannot turn your mother away 
from her own hearth,” replied Don Silverio with 
contempt. “ I tell you I will take the girl to some 
place in Ruscino where she will be safe for the 
present time. But I came to say another thing 
to you as well as this. I have been away three 
days. I have seen the Prefect, Senatore Gallo. 
He has informed me that your intentions, your 
actions, your plans and coadjutors are known to 
him, and that he is aware that you are conspiring 
to organise resistance and riot.” 

A great shock struck Adone as he heard; he 
felt as if an electric charge had passed through 
him. He had believed his secret to be as abso- 
lutely unknown as the graves of the lucomone 
under the ivy by the riverside.” 

“ How could he know? ” he stammered. “ Who 
is the traitor ? ” 


.The Waters of Edera 315 

“ That matters little, ” said Don Silverio. 
“ What matters much is, that all you do and de- 
sire to do is written down at the Prefecture.” 

Adone was sceptical. He laughed harshly. 

“If so, sir, why do they not arrest me? That 
would be easy enough. I do not hide.” 

“ Have you not ofttimes seen a birdcatcher 
spread his net ? Does he seize the first bird which 
approaches it? He is not so unwise. He waits 
until all the feathered innocents are in the meshes : 
then he fills his sack. That is how the govern- 
ment acts always. It gives its enemies full rope 
to hang themselves. It is cold of blood, and slow, 
and sure.” 

“ You say this to scare me, to make me desist.” 

“ I say it because it is the truth ; and if you 
were not a boy, blind with rage and unreason, you 
would long since have known that such actions as 
yours, in rousing or trying to rouse the peasants 
of the Val d’ Edera, must come to the ear of the 
authorities. Do not mistake. They let you alone 
as yet, not because they love you or fear you ; but 
because they are too cunning and too wise to 
touch the pear before it is ripe.” 

Adone was silent. He was not convinced ; and 
many evil thoughts were black within his brain. 


The Waters of Edera 


3 l6 

His first quarrel with a mother he adored had in- 
tensified all the desperate ferocity awake in him. 

“ You are as blind as a mole,” said Don Sil- 
verio, “ but you have not the skill of the mole in 
constructing its hidden galleries. You scatter your 
secrets broadcast as you scatter grain over your 
ploughed field. You think it is enough to choose 
a moonless night for you and your companions-in- 
arms to be seen by no living creature ! Does the 
stoat, does the wild cat, make such a mistake as 
that? If you make war on the State, study the 
ways of your foe. Realise that it has as many 
eyes, as many ears, as many feet as the pagan 
god; that its arm is as long as its craft, that it 
has behind it unscrupulous force and unlimited 
gold, and the support of all those who only want 
to pursue their making of wealth in ease and in 
peace. Do you imagine you can meet and beat 
such antagonists with a few rusty muskets, a few 
beardless boys, a poor little girl like Nerina? ” 

Don Silverio’s voice was curt, imperious, sar- 
donic; his sentences cut like whips; then after a 
moment of silence his tone changed to an infinite 
softness and sweetness of pleading and persua- 
sion. 

“ My son, my dear son ! cease to live in this 


The Waters of Edera 317 

dream of impossible issues. Wake to the brutality 
of fact, to the nakedness of truth. You have to 
suffer a great wrong; but will you be consoled 
for it by the knowledge that you have led to the 
slaughter men whom you have known from your 
infancy ? It can but end in one way — your con- 
flict with the power of the State. You and those 
who have listened to you will be shot down with- 
out mercy, or flung into prison, or driven to lead 
the life of tracked beasts in the woods. There is 
no other possible end to the rising which you are 
trying to bring about. If you have no pity for 
your mother, have pity on your comrades, for the 
women who bore them, for the women who love 
them.” 

Adone quivered with breathless fury as he 
heard. All the blackness of his soul gathered 
into a storm of rage, burst forth in shameful doubt 
and insult. He set his teeth, and his voice hissed 
through them, losing all its natural music. 

“Sir, your clients are men in high place; mine 
are my miserable brethren. You take the side of 
the rich and powerful ; I take that of the poor and 
the robbed. Maybe your reverence has deemed it 
your duty to tell the authorities that which you 
say they have learned ? ” 


The Waters of Edera 


3 i8 

A knife through his breast-bone would have 
given a kindlier wound to his hearer. Amaze- 
ment under such an outrage was stronger in Don 
Silverio than any other feeling for the first mo- 
ment. Adone — Adone ! — his scholar, his beloved, 
his disciple ! — spoke to him thus ! Then an over- 
whelming disgust and scorn swept over him, and 
was stronger than his pain. He could have 
stricken the ungrateful youth to the earth. The 
muscles of his right arm swelled and throbbed; 
then, with an intense effort, he controlled the im- 
pulse to avenge. Without a word, and with one 
glance of reproach and of disdain, he turned away 
and went through the morning shadows under 
the drooping and laden apple boughs. 

Adone, with his teeth set hard and his eyes 
filled with savage fire, sprang down into the trench 
and resumed his work. 

He was impenitent. 

“ He is mad ! He knows not what he says ! ” 
thought the man whom he had insulted. But 
though he strove to excuse the outrage it was like 
a poisoned blade in his flesh. 

Adone could suspect him ! Adone could believe 
him to be an informer ! 

Was this all the recompense for eighteen years 


The Waters of Edera 319 

of unwearying affection, patience, and tuition? 
Though the whole world had witnessed against 
him, he would have sworn that Adone Alba 
would have been faithful to him. 

“ He is mad,” he thought. “ His first great 
wrong turns his blood to poison. He will come 
forgiven, but can never be forgotten, by any living 
man. It would yawn like a pit between them for 
ever. 

But he knew that what Adone had said to him, 
however repented of, however washed away with 
tears, was one of those injuries which may be 
to me weeping to-morrow.” 


XVII 


To this apple-tree field there was a high hedge 
of luxuriant elder and ash, myrtle and field-roses. 
Behind this hedge old Gianna was waiting for 
him ; the tears were running down her face. She 
took the skirt of his coat between her hands. 
“ Wait, your reverence, wait ! The child is in the 
cattle stable.” 

Don Silverio looked down on her a few mo- 
ments without comprehension. Then he remem- 
bered. 

“ Is she there indeed ? Poor little soul ! She 
must not go to the house.” 

“ She does not dream of it, Sir. Only she can- 
not understand why Madonna Clelia’s anger is so 
terrible. What can I do oh, Lord ! ” 

“ Keep her where she is for the present. I am 
going home. I will speak with some of the women 
in Ruscino, and find her some temporary shelter.” 

“ She will go to none, sir. She says she must 
be where she can serve Adone. If she be shut up, 
she will escape and run into the woods. Three 


320 


The Waters of Edera 321 

years ago she was a wild thing; she will turn wild 
again.” 

“ Like enough ! But we must do what we can. 
I am going home. I will come or send to you in 
a few hours.” 

Gianna reluctantly let him go. As he crossed 
the river he looked down on the bright water, here 
green as emeralds, there brown as peat, eddying 
round the old stone piers of the bridge, and an 
infinite sorrow was on him. 

As a forest fire sweeps away under its rolling 
smoke and waves of flame millions of obscure and 
harmless creatures, so the baneful fire of men's 
greed and speculations came from afar and laid 
low these harmless lives with neither thought of 
them or pity. 

Later in the day he sent word to Gianna to 
bring Nerina to the presbytery. They both came, 
obedient. The child looked tired and had lost her 
bright colour; but she had a resolute look on her 
face. 

“ My poor little girl,” he said gently to her, 
“ Madonna Clelia is angered against you. We 
will hope her anger will pass ere long. Mean- 
while you must not go to the house. You would 


322 The Waters of Edera 

not make ill-blood between a mother and her 
son?” 

“ No,” said Nerina. 

“ I have found a home for awhile for you, with 
old Alaida Manzi; you know her; she is a good 
creature. I am very sorry for you, my child; 
but you did wrong to be absent at night; above 
all not to go back to your chamber when Clelia 
Alba bade you do so.” 

Nerina’s face darkened. “ I did no harm.” 

“ I am sure you did not mean to do any ; but 
you disobeyed Madonna Clelia.” 

Nerina was silent. 

“ You are a young girl ; you must not roam the 
country at night. It is most perilous. Decent 
maidens and women are never abroad after moon- 
rise.” 

Nerina said nothing. 

“ You will promise me never to go out at night 
again ? ” 

“ I cannot promise that, sir.” 

“ Why? ” 

“ If I be wanted, I shall go.” 

“ If Adone Alba bid you — is that your mean- 
ing?” 

Nerina was silent. 


The Waters of Edera 323 

“ Do you think that it is fitting for you to have 
secrets from me, your confessor?” 

Nerina was silent : her rosy mouth was closed 
firmly. It was very terrible to have to displease 
and disobey Don Silverio; but she would not 
speak, not if she should burn in everlasting flames 
for ever. 

“ Take her away. Take her to Alaida,” he said 
wearily to Gianna. 

“ She only obeys Adone, sir,” said the old 
woman. “ All I can say counts as naught.” 

“ Adone will send her on no more midnight 
errands, unless he be brute and fool both. Take 
her away. Look to her, you and Alaida.” 

“ I will do what I can, sir,” said Gianna hum- 
and wrote in his fine, clear caligraphy a few lines : 
bly, and pushed the girl out into the village street 
before her. 

Don Silverio sat down at his deal writing-table 
“In the name of my holy office I forbid you to 
risk the life and good name of the maiden Nerina 
on your unlawful errands.” 

Then he signed and sealed the sheet, and sent 
it by his sacristan to Adone. 

He received no answer. 

The night which followed was one of the most 


The Waters of Edera 


3 2 4 

bitter in its meditations that he had ever spent; 
and he had spent many cruel and sleepless nights 
ere then. 

That Adone could for one fleeting moment 
have harboured so vile a thought filled him with 
nausea and amaze. Betray them! He! — who 
would willingly have given up such years of life 
as might remain to him could he by such a sac- 
rifice have saved their river and their valley from 
destruction. There was nothing short of vice or 
crime which he would not have done to save the 
Edera water from its fate. But it was utterly 
impossible to do anything. Even men of eminence 
had often brought all their forces of wealth and 
of argument against similar enterprises, and had 
failed in their opposition. What could a few 
score of peasants, and one poor ecclesiastic, do 
against all the omnipotence of Parliament, of mil- 
lionaires, of secretaries of State, of speculators, of 
promoters, tenacious and forcible and ravenous as 
as the octopus ? 

In those lonely night hours when the moon- 
beams shone on his bed and the little white dog 
nestled itself close to his shoulder, he was tortured 
also by the sense that it was his duty to arrest 
Adone and the men of the Vald’edera in their mad 


The Waters of Edera 325 

course, even at the price of such treachery to 
them as Adone had dared to attribute to him. 
But if that were his duty it must be his first 
duty which conciously he had left undone ! 

If he could only stop them on their headlong 
folly by betraying them they must rush on to their 
doom ! 

He saw no light, no hope, no assistance any- 
where. These lads would not be able to save 
a single branch of the river water, nor a sword- 
rush on its banks, nor a moorhen in its shallows, 
nor a cluster of myosotis upon its banks, and they 
would ruin themselves. 

The round golden moon shone between the 
budding vine-leaves at his casement. 

“ Are you not tired? ” he said to the shining 
orb. “ Are you not tired of watching the endless 
cruelties and insanities on earth ? ” 


XVIII 


The people of Ruscino went early to their beds ; 
the light of the oil-wicks of the Presbytery was 
always the only light in the village half an hour 
after dark. Nerina went uncomplainingly to hers 
in the dark stone house within the walls where 
she had been told that it w'as her lot to dwell. 
She did not break her fast; she drank great 
draughts of water; then, with no word except a 
brief good-night, she went to the sacking filled 
with leaves which the old woman Alaida pointed 
out for her occupancy. 

“ She is soon reconciled, ” thought the old 
crone. “ They have trained her well. ” 

Relieved of all anxiety, she herself lay down 
in the dark and slept. The girl seemed a good, 
quiet, tame little thing, and said her paternosters as 
she should do. But Nerina did not sleep. She was 
stifled in this little close room with its one shut- 
tered window. She who was used to sleep with 
the fresh fragrant air of the dark fields blowing 
326 


The Waters of Edera 


3 2 7 

over her in her loft, felt the sour, stagnant 
atmosphere take her like a hand by the throat. 

As soon as she heard by the heavy breathing of 
the aged woman that she was sunk in the con- 
gested slumber of old age the child got up nois- 
lessly — she had not undressed — and stole out of 
the chamber, taking the door key from the nail on 
which Alaida had hung it. A short stone stair 
led down to the entrance. No one else was sleep- 
ing in the house; all was dark, and she had not 
even a match or a tinder-box ; but she felt her way 
to the outer door, unlocked it, as she had been 
used to unlock the door at the Terra Vergine, and 
in another moment ran down the steep and stony 
street. She laughed as the wind from the river 
blew against her lips, and brought her the fra- 
grance of Adone’s autumn fields. 

“ I shall be in time ! ” she thought, as she ran 
down a short cut which led, in a breakneck de- 
scent, over the slope of what had once been the 
glacis of the fortress, beneath the Rocca to the 
bridge. 

The usual spot for the assembly of the mal- 
contents was a grassy hollow surrounded on all 
sides with woods, and called the tomb of Asdrubal, 
from a mound of masonry which bore that name ; 


328 The Waters of Edera 

although it was utterly improbable that Asdrubal 
who had been slain a hundred miles to the north- 
east on the Marecchia water, should have been 
buried in the Vald’edera at all ; but the place and 
the name were well known in the district to hun- 
dreds of peasants, who knew no more who or 
what Asdrubal had been than they knew the names 
of the stars which form the constellation of Per- 
seus. 

Adone had summoned them to be there by mid- 
night, and he was passing from the confines of his 
own lands on to those of the open moors when the 
child saw him. He was dressed in his working 
clothes, but he was fully armed : his gun on his 
shoulder, his great pistols in his sash, his dagger 
in his stocking. They were ancient arms; but 
they had served in matters of life and death, and 
would so serve again. On the three-edged blade 
of the sixteenth-century poignard was a blood- 
stain more than a century old which nothing 
would efface. 

“ Nerina! ” he cried, and was more distressed 
than pleased to see her there ; he had not thought 
of her. 

In the moonlight and the silvery olive foliage 
her little sunburnt face and figure took a softer 


The Waters of Edera 329 

and more feminine grace. But Adone had no 
sight for it. For him he was but a sturdy little 
pony, who would trot till she dropped. 

He was cruel as those who are possessed by 
one intense and absorbing purpose always are : he 
was cruel to Nerina as Garibaldi, in the days of 
Ravenna, was cruel to Anita. 

But through that intense egotism which sees 
in all the world only its own cause, its own end, 
its own misery, there touched him for one instant 
an unselfish pity for the child of whom he had 
made so mercilessly his servant and his slave. 

“ Poor little girl ! I have been hard to you, I 
have been cruel and unfair,” he said, as a vague 
sense of her infinite devotion to him moved him 
as a man may be moved by a dog’s fidelity. 

“ You have been good to me,” said Nerina; and 
from the bottom of her heart she thought so. “ I 
came to see if you wanted me,” she added humbly. 

“ No, no. They think ill of you for going my 
errands. Poor child, I have done you harm 
enough. I will not do you more.” 

“ You have done me only good.” 

“ What ! When my mother has turned you out 
of the house ! ” 

“ It is her right.” 


330 The Waters of Edera 

“ Let it be so for a moment. You shall come 
back. You are with old Alaida? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ How can you be out to-night ? ” 

“ She sleeps heavily, and the lock is not hard.” 
“ You are a brave child.” 

“ Is there nothing to do to-night? ” 

“ No, dear.” 

“ Where do you go? ” 

“ To meet the men at the tomb of Asdrubal.” 

“ Who summoned them? ” 

“ I myself. You must be sad and sorry, child, 
and it is my fault.” 

She checked a sob in her throat. “ I am not 
far away, and old Alaida is kind. Let me go on 
some errand to-night? ” 

“ No, my dear, I cannot.” 

He recalled the words of the message which he 
had received from Don Silverio that day. He 
knew the justice of this message, he knew that it 
only forbade him what all humanity, hospitality, 
manhood, and compassion forbade to him. One 
terrible passion had warped his nature, closed his 
heart, and invaded his reason to the exclusion of 
all other thoughts or instincts ; but he was not yet 
so lost to shame as, now that he knew what he had 


The Waters of Edera 331 

done, to send out a female creature into peril to do 
his bidding. 

“ Tell me, then, tell me, when will anything be . 
done? ” 

“ Whenever the labourers come to work on the 
water we shall drive them away.” 

“ But if they will not go ? ” 

“ Child, the river is deep ; we know its ways 
and its soundings; they do not.” 

Her great bright eyes flashed fire: an unholy 
joy laughed in them. 

“ We will baptize them over again! ” she said; 
and all her face laughed and sparkled in the moon- 
light. There was fierce mountain blood in her 
veins ; it grew hot at the thought of slaughter like 
the juice of grapes warmed in an August noon. 

He laughed also, savagely. “ Their blood will 
be on their own heads ! ” 

He meant to drive them out, swamp them in 
the stream, choke them in the sand, hunt them in 
the heather ; make every man of them rue the day 
that ever they came thither to meddle with the 
Edera water. 

“ Curse them ! Their blood will be on their own 
heads ! ” he said between his teeth. He was think- 
ing of the strange men who it was said would be 


The Waters of Edera 


33 2 

at work on the land and the water before the 
moon, young now, should be in her last quarter; 
men hired by the hundreds, day labourers of the 
Romagna and the Puglia, leased by contract, mar- 
shalled under overseers, different in nothing from 
slaves who groan under the white man’s lash in 
Africa. 

As he went on along the path which led through 
his own fields to the moors, his soul was dark as 
night; it enraged him to have been forced by his 
conscience and his honour to obey the command 
of Don Silverio. 

“ No, no,” he said sternly. “ Get you back to 
your rest at Ruscino. I did wrong, I did basely 
to use your ignorance and abuse your obedience. 
Get you gone, and listen to your priest, not to 
me. 

The child, ever obedient, vanished through the 
olive boughs. Adone went onward northward to 
his tryst. 

But she did not go over the bridge. She waited 
a little while then followed on his track. Gianna 
was right. She was a wild bird. She had been 
caught and tamed for a time, but she was always 
wild. The life which they had given her had been 
precious and sweet to her, and she had learned 


The Waters of Edera 333 

willingly all its ways; but at the bottom of her 
heart the love of liberty, the love of movement, 
the love of air and sky and freedom were stronger 
than all. She was of an adventurous temper also, 
and brave like all Abruzzese, and she longed to 
see one of those moonlit midnight meetings of 
armed men to which she had so often borne the 
summons. Now that she had escaped from Alai- 
da’s she could not have forced herself to go back 
out of this clear, cool, radiant, night into the little, 
close, dark, sleeping-chamber. No, not if Don Sil- 
verio himself had stood in her path with the cross 
raised. 

She doubled like a hare, and came out on to the 
path which Adone had taken, and within a few 
yards of him, ready to hide herself in the furze 
and broom if he turned his head. But he did not 
do so ; he went straight onward. 

She knew the way to the tomb of Asdrubal, 
even in the darkness, as well as he did. It was a 
grassy hollow surrounded by dense trees, some 
five miles or more from the Terra Vergine, on the 
north bank of the river. The flat, grassy solitude 
was clear enough and large enough to permit the 
assemblage of several scores of men ; it was the 
spot generally chosen for these armed meetings. 


334 The Waters of Edera 

Adone went on, unconscious that he was fol- 
lowed; he went at a swing trot, easy, and swift; 
the sinews of his lithe limbs were strong as steel, 
and his rage, all aflame, lent lightning to his feet. 

She allowed Adone to precede her by half a 
mile or more, for if he had seen her his anger 
would have been great, and she feared it. She 
went skipping and bounding along where the path 
was clear in all the joy of liberty and rapture of 
the fresh night air. The hours spent in Alaida’s 
close house in the village had been as terrible to 
her as his hours in a birdcatcher’s hamper are to 
a wild bird. Up at Ansalda she had always been 
out of doors, and here at the Terra Vergine she 
had gone under a roof only to eat and sleep. 

The moon which was in the beginning of its 
first quarter had passed behind the hills ; there was 
little light, for there were as yet few stars visible, 
but that was no matter to her. She knew her way 
as well as any mountain hare. 

The pungent odour of the heaths through which 
she went seemed to her like a draught of wine, the 
strong sea breeze which was blowing bore her up 
like wings. She forgot that she was once more a 
homeless waif, as she had been that day when she 
had sat under the dock leaves by the Edera water. 


The Waters of Edera 335 

He had told her she should go back ; she believed 
him: that was enough. Madonna Clelia would 
forgive, for what harm had she done ? All would 
be well; she would feed the oxen again, and go 
again to the spring for water, and all would be as 
it had been before — her thoughts, her desires, 
went no farther than that. And she went on 
gaily, running where there was open ground, 
pushing hard where the heather grew, going al- 
ways in the same path as Adone had done. All 
of a sudden she stopped short, in alarm. The 
night was still ; the rushing of the river was loud 
upon it, the owls hooted and chuckled, now and 
then a fox in the thickets barked. There are many 
sounds in the open country at night; sounds of 
whirring pinions, of stealthy feet, of shrill, lone 
cries, of breaking twigs, of breaking ferns, of lit- 
tle rivulets unheard by day, of timid creatures tak- 
ing courage in the dark. But to these sounds she 
was used ; she could give a name to every one of 
them. She heard now what was unfamiliar to her 
in these solitudes ; she heard the footsteps of men ; 
and it seemed to her, all around her, as though in 
a moment of time, the heath and bracken and furze 
grew alive with them. Were they men of Ruscino 
going to their tryst with Adone? She did not 


336 The Waters of Edera 

think so, for she had never known the few men 
in the village summon courage to join the armed 
meetings of the men of the valley. She stopped 
and listened, as a pole-cat which was near her did ; 
the sounds were those of human beings, breathing 
creeping, moving under the heather. 

Suddenly she felt some presence close to her in 
the dark; she held her breath; she shrank noise- 
lessly between the plumes of heath. If they were 
men of the country they would not hurt her, but 
if not — she was not sure. 

Near her was an open space where the heather 
had been recently cut. The men debouched on to 
it from the undergrowth; there was a faint light 
from the stars on that strip of rough grass; she 
saw that they were soldiers, five in number. 

A great terror cowed her like a hand of ice at 
her heart, a terror not for herself, but for those 
away there, in the hollow bed by the three stone- 
pines. 

They were soldiers ; yes, they were soldiers ; the 
sounds she had heard had been the crushing of the 
plants under their feet, the click of their muskets 
as they moved; they were soldiers! Where had 
they come from ? There were no soldiers at Rus- 


cino. 


The Waters of Edera 337 

The only time when she had ever seen soldiers 
had been when the troopers had captured Baruffo. 
These were not troopers; they were small men, 
on foot, linen-clad, moving stealthily, and as if in 
fear; only the tubes of their muskets glistened in 
the light of the great planets. 

She crouched down lower and lower, trying to 
enter the ground and hide ; she hoped they would 
go onward, and then she could run — faster than 
they — and reach the hollow, and warn Adone and 
his fellows. She had no doubt that they came to 
surprise the meeting; but she hoped from their 
pauses and hesitating steps that they were uncer- 
tain what way to take. 

“ If you come to me to lead you — aye ! I will 
lead you ! — you will not forget where I lead ! ” 
she said to herself, as she hid under the heather; 
and her courage rose, for she saw a deed to be 
done. For they were now very near to the place 
of meeting, and could have taken the rebels in a 
trap, if they had only known where they were; 
but she, watching them stand still, and stare, and 
look up to the stars, and then north, south, east, 
and west, saw that they did not know, and that 
it might be possible to lead them away from the 


338 The Waters of Edera 

spot by artifice, as the quail leads the sportsman 
away from the place where her nest is hidden. 

As the thought took shape in her brain a sixth 
man, a sergeant who commanded them, touched 
her with his foot, stooped, clutched her, and pulled 
her upward. She did not try to escape. 

“ What beast of night have we here? ” he cried. 
“ Spawn of devils, who are you ? ” 

Nerina writhed under the grip of his iron fin- 
gers, but she still did not try to escape. He cursed 
her, swore at her, shook her, crushed her arm 
black and blue. She was sick with pain, but she 
was mute. 

“ Who are you? ” he shouted. 

“ I come down from the mountains to work here 
in summer.” 

“ Can any of you speak the dialect? ” cried the 
sergeant to his privates. 

One man answered, “ I come from Monte 
Corno ; it is much the same tongue there as in 
these parts.” 

“ Ask her the way, then.” 

The soldier obeyed. 

“ What is the way to the Three Pines ? — to the 
tomb of Asdrubal ? ” 

“ The way is long,” said Nerina. 


The Waters of Edera 


339 


“ Do you know it ? ” 

“ I know it.” 

“ Have you heard tell of it ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ That men meet at night there ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Meet this night there? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ You know where the tomb of Asdrubal is? ” 

“ Have I not told you ? ” 

The soldier repeated her answer translated to 
his sergeant; the latter kept his grasp on her. 

“ Ask her if she will take us there.” 

The soldier asked her and translated her an- 
swer. 

“ If we give her two gold pieces she will take us 
there.” 

“ Spawn of hell ! I will give her nothing. But 
if she do not lead us right I will give her a bullet 
for her breakfast.” 

The soldier translated to Nerina : “ He will give 
you two gold pieces if you guide us aright; and 
you need have no fear ; we are honest men and the 
king’s servants.” 

“ I will guide the king’s servants,” said Nerina. 

“ You are sure of the way? ” 


340 The Waters of Edera 

“ Is the homing pigeon sure of his ? ” 

“ Let us be off,” said the sergeant. “ A bullet 
for her if she fail.” 

He had little pleasure in trusting to this girl of 
the Abruzzi hills, but he and his men were lost 
upon these moors, and might grope all night, and 
miss the meeting, and fail to surprise those who 
gathered at it. He reckoned upon fear as a sure 
agent to keep her true, as it kept his conscripts 
under arms. 

“ Bid him take his hand off me,” said Nerina, 
“ or I do not move.” 

The private translated to his superior. “ She 
prays of your mercy to leave her free, as she can- 
not pass through the heather.” 

The sergeant let her go unwillingly, but pushed 
her in front of him, and levelled his revolver at 
her. 

“ Tell her if she try to get away I fire.” 

“ Tell him I know that,” said Nerina. 

She was not afraid, for a fierce, unholy joy was 
in her veins ; she could have sung, she could have 
laughed, she could have danced ; she held them in 
her power ; they had come to ensnare Adone, and 
she had got them in her power as if they were so 
many moles ! 


The Waters of Edera ^41 

They tied her hands behind her; she let them 
do it; she did not want her hands. Then she be- 
gan to push her way doggedly with her head down 
to the south. The tomb of Asdrubal was due 
north ; she could see the pole star, and turned her 
back to it and went due south. 

Three miles or more southward there was a 
large pollino, or swamp known as L’Erba Molle, 
the wet grass; the grass was luxuriant, the flora 
was varied and beautiful ; in appearance it was a 
field, in reality it was a morass ; to all people of the 
Vald’edera it was dreaded and avoided, as quick- 
sands are by the seashore. 

She went on as fast as the narrow path, winding 
in and out between the undergrowth, permitted 
her to go; with the armed soldiers, heavy laden 
with their knapsacks and their boots, following 
her clumsily, and with effort, muttering curses on 
their ill-luck and their sleepless night. 

The stars were now larger and brighter; the 
darkness was lightened, the river was running 
away from its southern birthplace in the hills 
which lie like crouched lions about the feet of the 
Leonessa. She could hear its distant murmur. 
“ They come to capture you,” she said to it, “ and 


The Waters of Edera 


342 

I will kill them. They shall choke and go down, 
down, down ” 

And her heart leapt within in; and she went 
with the loaded revolver pointed at her from be- 
hind as though she went to her bridal-bed. 

“ Where are you taking us, vile little bitch? ” 
the sergeant cried, and the soldier from the 
Abruzzi translated : “ Pretty little brown one, 
whither do you go ? ” 

“ I take you straight,” said Nerina, “ only you 
go too clumsily, for men in these parts should not 
wear leather upon their feet.” 

And the soldiers sighed assent, and would will- 
ingly have gone barefoot, and the sergeant swore 
in tones of thunder because he could not under- 
stand what she said. 

Before long they came in sight of the Erba 
Molle; the wet grass, which looked like a fair, 
peaceful pasture, with thousands of sword rushes 
golden upon its surface. The dawn was faint, and 
shone upon its verdure ; there were great flocks of 
water-birds at roost around it, and they rose with 
shrill cries and great noise of wings, with a roar 
as though a tide were rising. 

“ Pass you after me, and set your feet where I 
set mine,” said Nerina to the little soldier of the 


The Waters of Edera 


343 

Abruzzi, and she put down her foot on the first 
pile, sunk almost invisible under the bright green 
slime. 

Across it stretched a line of wooden piles which 
served as stepping-stones to those who had the 
courage and the steadiness to leap from one to 
another of them. It was not three times in a sea- 
son that any one dared to do so. Adone did so 
sometimes; and he had taught Nerina how to 
make the passage. 

The swamp was of a brilliant emerald hue from 
the ooze and stagnant waters under the grass, but 
in aspect it seemed a smooth meadow, with only 
the ripple of the grasses like that of a green lake 
to disturb its surface ; it had killed many who had 
trusted to it. 

The soldier of the Abruzzi said to his superior, 
“ She says we must set our feet where she sets 
hers. We are quite near now to the tomb of the 
barbarian. ” 

Nerina, with the light leap of a kid, bounded 
from pile to pile. They thought she went on solid 
ground ; on meadow grass. The sergeant and his 
men crowded on to what they thought was pas- 
ture. In the uncertain shadows and scarce dawn- 
ing light, they did not see the row of submerged 


344 The Waters of Edera 

piles. They sank like stones in the thick ooze; 
they were sucked under to their knees, to their 
waists, to their shoulders, to their mouths; the 
yielding grasses, the clutching slime, the tangled 
weed, the bottomless mud, took hold of them ; the 
water-birds shrieked and beat their wings; the 
hideous clamor of dying men answered them. 

Nerina had reached the other side of the morass 
in safety, and her mocking laughter rang upon 
their ears. 

“ I have led you well ! ” she cried to them. “ I 
have led you well, oh servants of the king! — oh 
swine! — oh slaves! — oh spies! — oh hunters and 
butchers of men ! ” 

And she danced on the edge of the field of death, 
and the rosy light of the sunrise shone on her 
face. 

Had she run onward into the wood beyond she 
would have been saved. That instant of triumph 
and mockery lost her. 

The sergeant had put his revolver in his teeth ; 
he knew now that he was a dead man; the slime 
was up to his chin, under his feet the grass and 
the mud quaked, yielded, yawned like a grave. 

He drew his right arm out of the ooze, seized 
his revolver, and aimed at the dancing, mocking, 


The Waters of Edera 345 

triumphant figure, beyond the border of golden 
sword rushes. With a supreme effort he fired; 
then he sank under the mud and weed. 

The child dropped dead on the edge of the mo- 
rass. 

One by one each soldier sank. Not one escaped. 
The water-birds came back from their upward 
fljght and settled again on the swamp. 
Underneath it all was still. 


XIX 


Don Silverio rose with the dawn of day, and 
entered his church at five of the clock. There were 
but a few women in the gaunt, dark vastness of 
the nave. The morning was hot, and the scent of 
ripe fruit and fresh-cut grass came in from the 
fields over the broken walls and into the ancient 
houses. 

When mass was over, old Alaida crept over the 
mouldy mosaics timidly to his side, and kneeled 
down on the stones. 

“ Most reverend,” she whispered. “ ’Twas not 
my fault. I slept heavily ; she must have unlocked 
the door, for it was undone at dawn; her bed is 
empty, she has not returned.” 

“ You speak of Nerina? ” 

“ Of Nerina, reverence. I did all I could. It 
was not my fault. She was like a hawk in a cage.” 

“ I am grieved,” he said ; and he thought : “ Is 
it Adone ? ” 

He feared so. 


346 


The Waters of Edera 347 

“ Is she not at the Terra Vergine? ” he asked. 
Alaida shook her head. 

“ No, reverend sir. I sent my grandchild to 
ask there. Gianna has not seen her, and says the 
girl would never dare to go near Clelia Alba.” 

“ I am grieved,” said Don Silverio again. 

He did not blame the old woman, as who, he 
thought, blames one who could not tame an 
eaglet ? 

He went back to the presbytery and broke his 
fast on a glass of water, some bread, and some 
cresses from the river. 

He had sent for Gianna. In half an hour she 
came, distressed and frightened. 

“ Sir, I know not of her ; I should not dare to 
harbour her, even in the cattle- stall. Madonna 
Clelia would turn me adrift. When Madonna 
Clelia has once spoken ” 

“ Adone is at home? ” 

“ Alas ! no, sir. He went out at midnight ; we 
have not seen him since. He told me he went to 
a meeting of men at the Three Pines, at what they 
call the Tomb of the Barbarian.” 

Don Silverio was silent. 

“ It is very grave,” he said at last. 

“ Aye, sir, grave indeed,” said Gianna. “ Would 


348 The Waters of Edera 

that it were love between them, sir. Love is sweet 
and wholesome and kind, but there is no such 
thing in Adone’s heart. There it is only, alas! 
blackness and fire and hatred, sir ; blood-lust 
against those who mean ill to the river.” 

“ And his mother has lost all influence over 
him? ” 

“ All, sir. She is no more to him now than a 
bent stick. Yet, months ago, she gave him her 
pearls and her bracelets, and he sold them in a 
distant town to buy weapons.” 

“ Indeed ? What madness ! ” 

“ How else could the men have been armed, 
sir?” 

“ Armed ! ” he repeated. “ And of what use is 
it to arm ? What use is it for two hundred peas- 
ants to struggle against the whole forces of the 
State? They will rot in prison; that is all that 
they will do.” 

“ Maybe yes, sir. Maybe no,” said the old 
woman with obstinacy of ignorance. “ Some one 
must begin. They have no right to take the water 
away, sir; no more right than to take the breast 
from the babe.” 

Then, afraid of having said so much, she 
dropped her courtesy and went out into the street. 


The Waters of Edera 349 

But in another moment she came back into the 
study with a scared, blanched face, in which the 
wrinkles were scarred deep like furrows in a field. 

“ Sir — sir ! ” she gasped, “ there are the sol- 
diery amongst us.” 

Don Silverio rose in haste, put the little dog on 
his armchair, closed the door of his study, and 
went down the narrow stone passage which parted 
his bookroom from the entrance. The lofty door- 
way showed him the stones of the familiar street, 
a buttress of his church, a great branch of one of 
the self-sown ilex-trees, the glitter of the arms and 
the white leather of the cross belts of a sentinel. 
The shrill lamentations of the women seemed to 
rend the sunny air. He shuddered as he heard. 
Coming up the street farther off were half a troop 
of carabineers and a score of dragoons ; the swords 
of the latter were drawn, the former had their 
carbines levelled. The villagers, screaming with 
terror, were closing their doors and shutters in 
frantic haste ; the door of the presbytery alone re- 
mained open. Don Silverio went into the middle 
of the road, and addressed the officer who headed 
the carabineers. 

“ May I ask to what my parish owes this 
visit?” 


350 The Waters of Edera 

“ We owe no answer to you, reverend sir,” said 
the lieutenant. 

The people were sobbing hysterically, catching 
their children in their arms, calling to the Holy 
Mother to save them, kneeling down on the sharp 
stones in the dust. Their priest felt ashamed of 
them. 

“ My people,” he called to them, “ do not be 
afraid. Do not hide yourselves. Do not kneel 
to these troopers. We have done no wrong.” 

“ I forbid you to address the crowd,” said the 
officer. “ Get you back into your house.” 

“ What is my offence? ” 

“ You will learn in good time,” said the com- 
mandant. “ Get you into your presbytery.” 

“ My place is with my people.” 

The officer, impatient, struck him on the chest 
with the pommel of his sword. 

Two carabineers thrust him back into the pas- 
sage. 

“ No law justifies your conduct,” he said coldly, 
“ or authorises you to sever me from my flock.” 

“ The sabre is law here,” said the lieutenant in 
command. 

“ It is the only law known anywhere in this 
kingdom,” said Don Silverio. 


The Waters of Edera 351 

“ Arrest him,” said the officer. “ He is creating 
disorder.” 

The carabineers drove him into his study, and 
a brigadier began to ransack his papers and draw- 
ers. 

He said nothing ; the seizure of his manuscripts 
and documents were indifferent to him, for there 
was nothing he had ever written which would not 
bear the fullest light. But the insolent and arbi- 
trary act moved him to keen anxiety because it 
showed that the military men had licence to do 
their worst, at their will, and his anguish of ap- 
prehension was for Adone. He could only hope 
and pray that Adone had returned, and might be 
found tranquilly at work in the fields of the Terra 
Vergine. But his fears were great. Unless more 
soldiery were patrolling the district in all direc- 
tions it was little likely, he thought, that these 
men would conduct themselves thus in Ruscino; 
he had no doubt that it was a concerted move- 
ment, directed by the Prefect and the general com- 
manding the garrisons of the province, and in- 
tended to net in one haul the malcontents of the 
Vald’edera. 

From his study there was no view upon the 
street; he could hear the wailing of women and 


352 The Waters of Edera 

screaming of children from the now closed houses : 
that was all. 

“ What is it your men do to my people? ” he 
said sternly to the lieutenant. 

The young man did not reply ; he went on throw- 
ing papers into a trunk. 

“ Where is your warrant for this search? We 
are not in a state of siege ? ” asked Don Silverio. 

The officer, with a significant gesture, drew his 
sabre up half way out of its sheath ; then let it fall 
again with a clash. He vouchsafed no other an- 
swer. 

Some women’s faces pressed in at the grating 
of the window which looked on the little garden, 
scared, blanched, horrified, the white head, and 
sunburnt features of Gianna foremost. 

“ Reverendissimo ! ” they screamed as with one 
voice. “ They are bringing the lads in from the 
moors.” 

And Gianna shrieked, “Adone ! They have got 
Adone ! ” 

Don Silverio sprang to his feet. 

“ Adone ! Have you taken Adone Alba ? ” 

“ The ringleader ! By Bacchus ! yes,” cried the 
brigadier, with a laugh. “ He will get thirty years 


The Waters of Edera 


353 

at the galleys. Your flock does you honour, Rev- 
erendissimo ! ” 

“Let me go to my flock/’ said Don Silverio; 
and some tone in his voice, some gesture of his 
hand, had an authority in them which compelled 
the young man to let him pass unopposed. 

He went down the stone passage to the archway 
of the open door. A soldier stood sentinel there. 
The street was crowded with armed men. The 
air was full of a hideous clangour and clamour; 
above all rose the shrill screams of the women. 

“ No one passes,” said the sentinel, and he lev- 
elled the mouth of his musket at Don Silverio’s 
breast. 

“ I pass,” said the priest, and with his bare 
hand he grasped the barrel of the musket and 
forced it upward. 

“ I rule here, in the name of God,” he said in a 
voice which rolled down the street with majestic 
melody, dominating the screams, the oaths, the 
hell of evil sound ; and he went down the steps of 
his house, and no man dared lay a hand on him. 

Where was Adone ? 

He could hear the trampling of horses and the 
jingling of spears and scabbards; the half squad- 
ron who had beaten the moors that night were 


The Waters of Edera 


354 

coming up the street. Half a battalion of soldiers 
of the line, escorted by carabineers, came in from 
the country, climbing the steep street, driving be- 
fore them a rabble of young men, disarmed, 
wounded, lame, with their hands tied behind them, 
the remnant of those who had met at the tomb of 
Asdrubal in the night just passed. They had been 
surprised, seized, surrounded by a wall of steel; 
some had answered to their leader’s call and had 
defended themselves, but these had been few; 
most of them had thrown down their weapons and 
begged for mercy when the cold steel of the sol- 
diers was at their throats. Adone had fought as 
though the shade of Asdrubal had passed into 
him; but his friends had failed him; his enemies 
had outnumbered him a score to one ; he had been 
overpowered, disarmed, bound, dragged through 
his native heather backward and upward to Rus- 
cino, reaching the shadow of the walls as the sun 
rose. 

The child lay dead by the stagnant pond, and 
the men she had led to their death lay choked with 
the weeds and the slime; but of that he knew 
naught. 

All he knew was that his cause was lost, his life 
forfeit, his last hope dead. 


The Waters of Edera 355 

Only by his stature and his bearing could he be 
recognised. His features were black from powder, 
and gore ; his right arm hung broken by a shot ; 
his clothing had been torn off him to his waist; 
he was lame; but he alone still bore himself erect 
as he came on up the village street. The others 
were huddled together in a fainting, tottering, 
crazed mob ; all were sick and swooning from the 
long march, beaten when they paused by belts and 
the flat of sabres. 

Don Silverio saw that sight in front of his 
church, in the white, clear light of early morning, 
and on the air there was a sickly stench of sweat, 
of powder, of wounds, of dust. 

He went straight to the side of Adone. 

“ My son, my son ! I will come with you. They 
cannot refuse me that.” 

But the soul of Adone was as a pit in which a 
thousand devils strove for mastery. There was 
no light in it, no conscience, no gratitude, no re- 
morse. 

“ Judas! ” he cried aloud; and there was foam 
on his lips and there was red blood in his eyes. 
“ Judas ! you betrayed us ! ” 

Then as a young bull lowers his horns he bent 
his head and bit through and through to the bone 


356 The Waters of Edera 

the wrist of the soldier who held him; in terror 
and pain the man shrieked and let go his hold; 
Adone’s arms were bound behind him, but his 
limbs, though they dripped blood, were free. 

He fronted the church, and that breach in the 
blocks of the Etruscan wall through which Nerina 
had taken her path to the river a few hours before. 
He knew every inch of the descent. Hundreds 
of times in his boyhood had he run along the 
ruined wall and leaped from block to block of the 
Cyclopean huge stones, to spring with joyous 
shouts into the river below. 

As the soldier with a scream of agony let go his 
hold, he broke away like a young lion released 
from the den. Before they could seize him he 
had sprung over the wall and was tearing down 
the slope ; the soldiers in swift pursuit behind him 
stumbled, rolled down the slippery grass, fell over 
the blocks of granite. He, sure of foot, knowing 
the way from childhood, ran down it safely, 
though blood poured from his wounds and blinded 
his sight, and a sickness like the swooning of death 
dulled his brain. Beyond him and behind him was 
the river. He dashed into it like a hunted beast 
swimming to sanctuary; he ran along in it with 
its brightness and coolness rippling against his 


The Waters of Edera 


357 

parched throat. He stooped and kissed it for the 
last time. 

“ Take me — save me — comrade — brother — 
friend! ” he cried aloud to it with his last breath 
of life. 

Then the sky grew dark, and only the sound of 
the water was heard in his ears. By the bridge 
its depth was great, and the current was strong 
under the shade of the ruined keep. It swept his 
body onward to the sea. 

From the cornfields under the olive-trees his 
mother saw him spring to that last embrace. 


XX 


It was the beginning of winter when Don Sil- 
verio Frascara, having been put upon his trial and 
no evidence of any sort having been adduced 
against him, was declared innocent and set free, 
no compensation or apology being offered to him. 

“ Were it only military law it had been easy 
enough to find him guilty,” said Senator Giovac- 
chino Gallo to the Syndic of San Beda, and the 
Count Corradini warmly agreed with his Excel- 
lency that for the sake of law, order, and public 
peace it would be well could the military tribunals 
be always substituted for the civil; but alas! the 
monarchy was not yet absolute ! 

He had been detained many weeks and months 
at the city by the sea, where the trial of the young 
men of the Vald’edera had been held with all the 
prolonged, tedious, and cruel delays common to 
the national laws. Great efforts had been made 
to implicate him in the criminal charges; but it 
had been found impossible to verify such suspi- 
358 


The Waters of Edera 


359 

cions; every witness by others, and every action 
of his own, proved the wisdom, the purity, and 
the excellence in counsel and example of his whole 
life at Ruscino. The unhappy youths who had 
been taken with arms in their hands were con- 
demned for overt rebellion and conspiracy against 
authority, and were sentenced, some to four, some 
to seven, some to ten, and, a few who were con- 
sidered the ringleaders, to twenty-five years of 
cellular confinement. But against Don Silverio 
it was found impossible even to make out the sem- 
blance of an accusation, the testimony even of 
those hostile to him being irresistibly in his fa- 
vour in all ways. He had done his utmost to de- 
fend the poor boys and men who had been misled 
by Adone to their own undoing, and he had de- 
fended also the natives and the character of the 
dead with an eloquence which moved to tears the 
public who heard him, and touched even the hearts 
of stone of president and advocates; and he had 
done this at his own imminent risk; for men of 
law can never be brought to understand that com- 
prehension is not collusion, as that pity is not fel- 
lowship. But all his efforts failed to save the 
young men from the utmost rigour of the law. 
It even declared that the most severe example was 


360 The Waters of Edera 

necessary to check once for all by its terrors the 
tendency of the common people to resist the State 
and its public works and decrees. Useful and pa- 
triotic enterprises must not be impeded or wrecked 
because ignorance was opposed to progress: thus 
said the Public Prosecutor in an impassioned ora- 
tion which gained for him eventually emolument 
and preferment. The rustics were sent in a body 
to the penitentiaries; and Don Silverio was per- 
mitted to go home. 

Cold northern winds blew from the upper Apen- 
nines and piled the snows upon the marble and 
granite of the Abruzzi as he- descended from the 
hills and crossed the valley of the Edera towards 
Ruscino. It seemed to him as though a century had 
passed since he had left it. In the icy wind which 
blew from the snows of the hills below the Leo- 
nessa he shivered, for he had only one poor, thin 
coat to cover him. His strength, naturally great, 
had given way under the mental and physical suf- 
ferings of the last six months, although no word 
of lament had ever escaped him. Like all gener- 
ous natures he rebuked himself for the sins of 
others. Incessantly he asked himself — might he 
not have saved Adone ? 

As he came to the turn in the road which 


The Waters of Edera 361 

brought him within sight of the river, he sat down 
on a stone and covered his eyes with his hand. He 
dreaded what his eyes should see. The sacristan 
had come to meet him bringing the little dog, 
grown thin, and sad, and old with sorrow. 

“I did all I could for him, but he would not be 
consoled,” murmured the old man. 

From this point he had reached the course of 
the Edera and the lands of the Terra Vergine 
were visible, he knew. With an effort, like one 
who forces his will to look on a dead face, he un- 
covered his eyes and looked downward. The 
olive-trees were still standing; where the house 
had stood was a black, charred, roofless shell. 

“ Reverend,” said the old man below his breath, 
“ when she knew Adone was drowned she set fire 
to the house, and so perished. They say she had 
promised her son.” 

“ I know ! ” said Don Silverio. 

The wind from the north swept across the val- 
ley and drove the water of the Edera in yellow 
foam and black eddies through the dead sedges. 
Above Ruscino the acacia thickets were down, the 
water was choked with timber and iron and stone, 
the heather was trampled and kacked, the sand 
and gravel were piled in heaps, the naked soil 


362 The Waters of Edera 

yawned in places like fresh-dug graves ; along the 
southern bank were laid the metals of a light rail- 
way; on the lines of it were some empty trucks 
filled with bricks; the wooden huts of the work- 
men covered a dreary, dusty space ; the water was 
still flowing, but on all the scene were the soil, the 
disorder, the destruction, the vulgar meanness and 
disfigurement which accompany modern labour 
and affront like a coarse bruise on the gracious 
face of Nature. 

“ There have been three hundred men from the 
Puglia at work,” said the sacristan. “ They have 
stopped awhile now on account of the frost, but 
as soon as the weather opens ” 

“ Enough, enough! ” murmured Don Silverio; 
and the rose, and holding the little dog in his 
arms, went on down the uncouth familiar road. 

“ His body has never been found? ” he asked 
under his breath. 

The old man shook his head. 

“Nay, sir; what Edera loves it keeps. He 
dropped where he knew it was deepest.” 

As he returned up the village street there was 
not a soul to give him greeting except old Gianna, 
who kneeled weeping at his feet. The people 
peered out of their doorways and casements, but 


The Waters of Edera 363 

they said not a word of welcome. The memory 
of Adone was an idolatry with them, and Adone 
had said that he had betrayed them. One woman 
threw a stone at Signorino. Don Silverio covered 
the little dog, and received the blow on his own 
arm. 

r< For twenty years I have had no thought but to 
serve these, my people ! ” he thought ; but he 
neither rebuked nor reproached them. 

The women as he passed them hissed at him : 
“ Judas ! Judas ! ” 

One man alone said : “ Nay, ’tis a shame. Have 
you forgot what he did in the cholera ? ’Tis long 
ago, but still ” 

But the women said, “ He betrayed the poor 
lads. He brought the soldiers. He sold the water.” 

Then, under that outrage, his manhood and his 
dignity revived. 

He drew his tall form erect, and passed through 
them, and gave them his blessing as he passed. 

Then he went within his church and remained 
there alone. 

“ He is gone to pray for the soul of Adone,” 
said the sacristan. 

When he came out of the church and entered 
his house, the street was empty; the people were 


364 The Waters of Edera 

afraid of what they had done and of their own 
ingratitude. He crossed the threshold of the pres- 
bytery. The sere vine veiled his study casement; 
in the silence he could hear the sound of the Edera 
water; he sat down at his familiar table, and 
leaned his arms on it, his head on his arms. His 
eyes were wet, and his heart was sick ; his courage 
was broken. 

“ How shall I bear my life here ? ” he thought. 
All which had made it of value and lightened its 
solitude was gone. Even his people had turned 
against him; suspicious, thankless, hostile. 

The old sacristan, standing doubtful and timid 
at the entrance of the chamber, drew near and 
reverently touched his arm. 

“ Sir — here is a letter — it came three days ago.” 

Don Silverio stretched out his hand over the 
little dog’s head and took it. 

He changed colour as he saw its seal and super- 
scription. 

Rome had at last remembered him and awak- 
ened to his value. 

At the last Consistory he had been nominated 
to the Cardinalate. 


THE END. 


THE 


WATERS OF EDERA 


BY 


OUIDA 


Author of 

** The Messarenes ,” “ Under Two Flags,” Etc., Etc. 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap, Copyright No. 

Shelf. 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



O 


R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 
9 & n East i6th Street, New York 
1899 

























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